


The Impostures of Draco Malfoy

by Ally147



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-03
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-02-19 17:19:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2396462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ally147/pseuds/Ally147
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I will have this mirror, Granger. One way or another, it's only a matter of time." Hermione took two steps back and shot him a challenging look. "I would very much like to see you try, Malfoy." A slow, dangerous smirk crept over his lips and a flash of something indiscernible went through his stormy grey eyes. "Game on then, Granger." D/Hr, Hogwarts-era AU, EWE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This was my submission for the 2014 DramioneLove Love Fest. It is complete, and five chapters long. As per the prompt I chose, this is an A/U story, canon only through to OoTP. Lucius and Bellatrix are in Azkaban as Harry managed to kill Voldemort, who was simply a sadistic, racist dictator, at the DoM in a fit of rage after the death of Sirius. The characters featured, particularly Draco, are kind of OOC due to the changes. I've tried to keep them relatively true to form, but please keep it in mind. Also note, the concept for the mirror in the story was rather shamelessly lifted from the Disney version of 'Beauty and the Beast', and on the off chance someone notices or is curious, the title was adapted from a play written by French playwright, Moliere, called 'The Impostures of Scapin', and there is another nod to the play in the third chapter.
> 
> Super mega thank you to kanames_harisen for beta'ing this one, and to RZZMG, who modded the fest and did final beta checks of all the stories that were submitted, this one included.
> 
> WARNINGS: Very brief mentions of alcoholism, 'potions dependency' and possible suicidal tendencies for an off-screen character. Lots of profanity. Implied child abuse. One moment of non-explicit nudity. Little bits of innuendo interspersed throughout.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: "Harry Potter" is the property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. This work of fiction was created entirely for fun, not for profit, and no copyright infringement is intended.

**The Great Hall; morning**   
**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry**   
**Monday, December 1, 1997**

* * *

_Dear Miss Granger,_

_It is with great pleasure that we inform you that you are the winner of the First Annual Ministry_ 'Charm Me' _competition._

_As you are aware, the competition, open to all school-aged children in Wizarding Britain and numerous outlying European nations, required entrants to create and construct a charm that, in their eyes, our world needs. Your charm demonstrated a remarkable level of ingenuity and intelligence beyond your years, and was chosen in a unanimous decision by our esteemed panel of judges over nearly 5,000 other entrants!_

_You will also be pleased to know that your charm has been implemented for a trial run in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (D.M.L.E.), and is expected to do extremely well._

_Please accept our sincerest congratulations. You will find your prize attached._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Persephone P. Smythe,_   
_Dept. of Magical Competitions_   
_Ministry of Magic_

* * *

"Congratulations, Hermione," Harry said sincerely as he handed her letter back. "Though I don't think there was ever any doubt that you'd win a charms competition."

"Pretty neat about them using your charm in the Auror department, too," Ron chipped in brightly.

"Thank you, boys," Hermione replied warmly as she folded the letter and tucked it safely back into the voluminous pockets of her robes.

"When did you even find the time to enter?" Harry asked as he scooped up a spoonful of porridge. "I remember you mentioning the competition over the holidays, but you wouldn't have been able to work magic then."

"I've actually had the theory for the charm down since the summer before fifth year," Hermione explained, wincing at Harry's small flinch and deflated expression. "It seemed like something we might have needed at the time, with everything that was happening. _Thankfully_ ," she added, with a pointed look at Harry, "that happened not to be the case."

"What was your charm even for?" Ron asked, oblivious to Harry's discomfort and the withering glare that was sent his way.

"It was a means of using wands as homing beacons," Hermione elaborated as she spread a liberal amount of strawberry jam on her toast. "I can link my wand to Harry's, for example, and in the event that I went missing, he could use his wand to find mine, hopefully finding me in the process."

"Neat," Ron said simply before turning his attention back to his eggs. "A little odd that the Aurors didn't already have something like that, though," he muttered.

"What's the prize, anyway?" Harry cut in, looking around interestedly for a clue.

Hermione smiled and lifted a shoebox-sized parcel from the bench next to her. Harry and Ron leaned forward, expectant, watching as she slid her finger under the folds of the box, unfurling it to reveal a nest of delicate, snow-white tissue paper. Carefully, Hermione parted the soft tissue, grinning widely when it revealed a silver hand mirror wrapped in a piece of soft, lilac-coloured cloth.

"All that work for a bloody mirror?" Ron snorted incredulously as he fell back to his seat. "What sort of prize is that?"

"Oh, honestly, Ronald, do remember where we are," Hermione huffed. "You don't really believe the Ministry would give out ordinary hand mirrors as prizes, do you?"

She lifted the mirror out of its bed and laid it in the palm of her hand. The silver of the body was polished to its own mirror finish, and the glass within it rolled like storm clouds. She traced the ornate carvings on the handle and around the face; the engraved details were that of a peacock feather.

"There's some parchment on the back, stuck to the handle," Harry said suddenly, extending an arm across the table to pluck the offending article off and read it. "It's a little rhyme."

Her brow furrowed as she took the proffered piece of paper and read the short rhyme written upon it in elegant, glittering cursive:

_I show you things you cannot find,_  
 _and those you cannot see._   
_The magic of this mirror gives_   
_their image unto thee._

_Tap your wand to the mirror and speak the name of the person you wish to see._   
_To end, tap your wand to the glass again and say 'Finite'._

Setting aside the scrap of parchment, Hermione tentatively pressed the tip of her wand to the glass of the mirror and whispered, "Show me Dr. Eleanor Granger."

The clouds in the mirror swirled violently before parting to reveal the silent image of a harried looking woman with wild, curly hair, scribbling on some paperwork at a large mahogany desk.

"Is that your mum?" Harry asked.

"That's her," Hermione affirmed with a smile.

"You two look a lot alike."

Hermione simply smiled as she watched her mother work. After a few moments, Dr. Granger set her pen down and yawned, stretched her arms high above her head, slung a white coat over her shoulders and left the frame of the mirror, though the view of the office remained. Hermione tapped her wand to the mirror again and whispered _Finite_ , watching as the clouds rolled back into view.

"Anyone you'd like to check up on, Harry? Ron?" she offered.

Harry chuckled, but shook his head. "I think everyone I care about is where I can see them. Give it a few years and I might want to check up on Dudley, though. I swear he puts on an extra two stone every time I see him."

"Can you show us Charlie?" Ron asked, hopeful. "I haven't seen him in ages."

Hermione nodded and lifted the mirror and her wand up again. "Show me Charles Weasley," she asked of it, scooting over in her seat so Ron could sit beside her.

The clouds rolled away again to show the rugged, muscular figure of Dragon Keeper, Charlie Weasley. His skin was streaked with sweat and dirt as he muttered incantations and waved his wand over the gate of a large enclosure. There was a flash of flames in the foreground, and the gate he was working on rattled violently as a large, shimmering green tail slammed into it. Charlie remained unfazed, going about his job as though nothing untoward was happening.

"Wicked," Ron breathed with a grin as he returned to his original seat.

"I do admire your brother," Hermione commented before she tapped her wand to the glass and whispered another _Finite_. "He appears to be brilliant at what he does, and in such a dangerous and exciting field, too."

"He is pretty cool," Harry agreed, grinning. "Still have a hard time believing dragons are real sometimes."

"Even after the Tri-Wizard Tournament?" Hermione teased.

"You grew up thinking they were fairy tale make-believe just the same as I did!"

She laughed. "True. I remember being terrified of Maleficent in 'Sleeping Beauty' when she transformed into the dragon. I had nightmares for weeks after."

A scream and a shrill chastisement of, _"What the bloody hell was that for, you utter arse?"_ sounded from the Slytherin tables, and everyone in the hall rounded to see Theodore Nott clutching his face, moaning loudly as he quickly approached the grand doors with a frantic Daphne Greengrass trotting along worriedly at his side.

"Wonder what happened there," Ron mumbled before diving straight back into his meal.

"Back to the subject of nightmare dragons, you've got an admirer, Hermione," Harry told her in a low whisper, his eyes looking over her shoulder to the Slytherin table again. "Malfoy hasn't stopped staring at you since your package arrived."

"Really?" Hermione turned discreetly in her seat in time to see Malfoy quickly look away and start stabbing violently at his plate. "I wonder why."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Don't ask me to pretend to understand the inner workings of Malfoy's mind."

Hermione laughed and replaced the mirror in its box. "I think even a few minutes in his head would be enough to drive even the best of us to insanity."

"Probably," Harry agreed with a laugh. "Aren't you going to eat? You never touched your toast."

"I think I'll go put my mirror away first so I don't get food over it. Keep my seat for me?"

Harry nodded and drew Ron into conversation again as Hermione picked up her box and stood. She quickly smoothed down the front of her robes with her free hand and departed the hall. She barely made it five steps out the door before she was stopped by a firm hand on her shoulder.

"Name it," said an impatient voice from behind her.

She whirled around, coming face-to-face with a sour-looking Draco Malfoy.

"Excuse me?" she asked.

"Your price, Granger," he specified, jutting his chin towards the box in her hands. "Name it."

She held the box tight to her chest. "What for?"

He rolled his eyes. "What do you bloody well think I mean? The mirror, Granger! What will it take?"

"What on earth do you mean, what will it take? I'm not giving it to you!"

"I'm not suggesting that you would," Draco replied smoothly. "I'm merely offering you the opportunity to name what you would take in exchange."

"There is no price, Malfoy," she ground out, impatient. "I won it fairly."

His eyes narrowed. "You won it because the Ministry can't take their heads out of the arses long enough to realise there are bigger and more relevant problems in this world than those of two years ago."

Hermione paused and eyed him suspiciously. "What exactly are you suggesting?"

"I'm suggesting that I should have won that stupid charms competition, Granger! Your charm was created for a world that doesn't even exist anymore!" Draco snapped. "You won because the Ministry is still caught up in the hysteria of a war that never happened. The priorities of this Ministry are beyond fucked, Granger, and we both know it."

"My charm was created with the safety of the Wizarding world in mind, Malfoy," she spat. "Regardless of whether or not we are war-torn, it does not detract from the fact that the world we live in is still incredibly dangerous. Now, I'm not sure what your entry entailed, likely some sort of non-verbal hair bleaching charm, but the fact of the matter is that _I_ won, and _you_ didn't."

His eyes narrowed again, and he took one long stride towards her until their bodies were scant inches apart. He placed one hand on the box and leaned forward. "I will have this mirror, Granger," he whispered against her ear. "One way or another, it's only a matter of time."

Hermione took two steps back and shot him a challenging look. "I would very much like to see you try, Malfoy."

A slow, dangerous smirk crept over his lips and a flash of something indiscernible went through his stormy grey eyes. "Game on then, Granger," he said, shooting her a wink before backing slowly out of her path and returning to the Great Hall.

"You know he doesn't need more invitation than that, Hermione," Harry warned as he came up alongside her, his left side invisible from where the cloak was still slung over his shoulder.

She looked at him in confusion. "When did you get there?" she asked.

"I came out when I saw Malfoy following you," he explained. "You know he'll take what you just said as a challenge, don't you?"

"A challenge that I will win. He's Draco Malfoy, Harry," she stated primly. "It's not in his nature where I'm concerned to trick or steal something from me when he could have me hand the mirror over willingly, acknowledging to his face his supposed superiority over me in doing so."

"He'd be an idiot to believe you'd do that," Harry asserted.

"Obviously," Hermione scoffed. "I'm sure he knows that, too. But since he knows I won't bow to his whims, he's going to try to steal it, and he's going to be overconfident and sloppy in doing so. And when he slips up, I'm going to have a few surprises waiting for him."

"What sort of surprises?" Harry asked, wary.

She flashed a wicked grin. "Good ones, of course."

Harry gave a small smile and shook his head. "I hope you know what you're doing, Hermione."

"It'll be fine, Harry," she reassured him. "Besides, Malfoy and I have become… well, 'friends' isn't quite the right word, but he comes by to visit Blaise quite a bit, and we've talked a few times."

Harry laughed. "'Talked a few times'. Clever code for 'he likes to charm my knee-high socks off, and does a fair smashing job at it, too'."

Hermione sighed and fought the deep blush that was threatening to take over her features. "He likes to argue."

Harry grinned. "You love it, I know you do. Besides, with you I'm sure arguing and flirting are one and the same."

"I'm going to have to stop getting into fights with you, Harry, lest you start equating it with some bizarre sort of foreplay," Hermione said with a teasing smile. "Either way, Malfoy's different now, much calmer and far happier without his father's influence. I'd like to think I know him somewhat. I should be able to use that to my advantage."

Harry regarded her with a raised eyebrow. "Are you sure you're not supposed to be the one in Slytherin?"

"Asks the boy who was very nearly put in there himself," Hermione retorted.

Harry chuckled. "Touché. But really, Hermione, you ought to be careful dealing with someone like him. I know he's different and, dare I say it, actually sort of alright now. And I doubt he'd actually hurt you on purpose, but still."

Hermione barely stifled an unladylike snort. "Someone like him is about as threatening as a day-old kitten. You really shouldn't worry about him, or me, Harry," she reassured him. "Have I ever given you reason to doubt me?"

He sighed and ran a hand through his messy hair. "Never. I actually think I trust you more than anyone."

"Then trust me now," she implored him. "Besides, I think you'll be suitably impressed with what I have planned for him should he try anything."

"Do you now?" Harry asked with a grin of his own. "Open to suggestions?"

Hermione laughed and linked an arm with Harry's as they walked back into the Hall. "For you, Harry? Anything."


	2. Chapter 2

**Outside the Heads' Common Room; midday**   
**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry**   
**Saturday, December 6, 1997**

* * *

He'd never tell a soul, nor would he ever admit it out loud, but from the moment he first met her, Draco Malfoy knew he had a little bit of a masochistic streak for one Hermione Granger.

It was the kind of masochistic streak that had him seeking out her company with the sole intent of purposely antagonising her, because he rather liked the way her body pulled taut and her eyes flashed and her cheeks flushed when she was angry. It was the kind of masochistic streak that lent itself to many a cold shower and nights spent in hand with the image of her sparking with righteous fury playing out on repeat in his head as he worked himself to rapturous completion. It was the kind of masochistic streak that had him doing the exact same thing over and over again whenever the opportunity presented itself, and gods, it was starting to get annoying!

His other relationships with females had always been far simpler, baser and lust driven in nature. Whatever it was he had going on with Granger felt different, significant somehow, something he had instinctively known the first moment that bushy-haired, buck-toothed little girl first burst forth into his cabin on the Hogwarts Express, and was only reiterated over the years with each subsequent interaction (which never occurred nearly as often as he hoped).

After spending the better part of his sixth year waiting on tenterhooks as his father mounted unsuccessful appeal after unsuccessful appeal on his Azkaban sentence, he'd come back for his seventh year in a much calmer place than he'd ever been in before, and he had done his best to cultivate a tentative sort of a friendship with the feisty Gryffindor. He extended the olive branch to her, asking her forgiveness for his many and varied transgressions against her and her friends over the years. He had found himself shocked when she had accepted, and then positively flabbergasted when she offered her own apology for, in her words, 'being _almost_ as juvenile and close-minded as he had been'.

Their newfound relationship was best described as a game; a battle of wits to see just how far one could push the other before they snapped. Despite his challenging provocations, Granger rarely rose to the bait, opting instead to talk him in circles until he was about as useful to the remainder of the conversation as a half drowned Puffskein, flat on its back and gasping for breath. Or, at least, she never had until now.

_"I would very much like to see you try, Malfoy."_

He had received his own Ministry letter moments before she had. The Ministry twats (who wouldn't know a good thing if it kicked them in the bollocks) had been coolly cordial in their dismissal of his charm, and still the only thing that had offended him more at that moment was the sight of Granger tearing into her own letter and package, and the ensuing joy that had lit up her face as though it contained the location of the Holy bloody Grail.

Despite the odd swooping feeling in his stomach he had felt as he'd watched her—which he'd opted to studiously ignore, and was certainly _not_ the product of years upon years of repressed yearning for Granger (as Nott had stupidly chosen to loudly opine over breakfast that morning, resulting in a trip to the Hospital Wing to take care of sudden and mysterious onset of painful boils that had swiftly plagued him)—the urge and unadulterated need to rectify the wrong and make the mirror his was all encompassing. And so, he planned and plotted, creating elaborate schemes that made the tasks of the Triwizard Tournament look like the easiest thing since Lavender Brown, before deciding that perhaps, in this case, simplicity would be best.

He had already seen Granger that morning, finding her hosting some sort of little tutorial group for first-year students in the Great Hall. They crowded around her like ants on sugar, with wide eyes and slack jaws, hanging on her every word as she explained various theories and techniques for different subjects. Draco watched them for a moment with a sneer – surely _he_ had never been such a small, simpering little gobshite – before setting off to enact the first phase in his plan.

He soon found himself standing in front of the portrait guarding the entrance to the Head's Dormitory. He cleared his throat loudly, waiting for the two figures within to acknowledge him. It was a painting of a fox hunt, with two wizards riding on horseback surrounded by a pack of hounds, all of whom sniffed interestedly around the edge of the painting, occasionally barking or darting off in chase of an invisible rabbit.

"Password?" the wizards asked in unison.

"Darling buds of May," Draco replied in a monotone.

A dog barked, and the men nodded, and the portrait moved to the side, opening to reveal the warm and welcoming Head's common room.

He took silent, tentative steps forward and cast a cursory glance around the room—from the inviting sofa and armchairs sitting in front of the empty fireplace, to the small kitchenette in the corner, even roving an eye over the large desk built for two that was littered in books and parchment and took up much of the available space. Lastly, he checked over the staircase and up to the balcony that ran the length of the back wall, with three doors spread across it; centre for the bathroom, right for the Head Boy, and left for the Head Girl.

He had barely taken one step toward the stairs before the portrait door flew open again.

"Draco! What are you doing here?"

Draco froze and silently counted to ten. Blaise Zabini truly was an unmitigated arsehole.

He turned and regarded his friend coolly. "Waiting for you, of course," he lied.

Blaise looked at him with a quirked eyebrow and brushed past him without a backwards glance. "While the possibility alone of the pleasure of my company has been known to drive people to do rather crazy things, how did you get in here?"

"I know your password."

"And how, may I ask, do you know that?"

"What, you think I feign deafness when I follow you in here?" Draco snorted, derisive. "Who chooses the passwords anyway? You hardly strike me as a fan of Shakespeare's works."

"Neither do you, frankly," Blaise said as he toed his shoes off and kicked them carelessly towards the stairs before kneeling down to pile logs in the fireplace. "I wouldn't have thought that a playwright as quintessentially Muggle as Shakespeare would be required reading in the Malfoy household—unless it was to recite lines to laugh at before you threw it on a fire."

"I have my doubts that a Muggle could have written _The Tempest_ ," Draco replied with a wry smirk. "And I only started reading his works a year and a half ago."

Blaise shook his head and chuckled. "Only you would start with bloody Muggle _books_ the moment your father got carted away. Anyway, Hermione chose the password this week." He dusted off his hands and stood, pointing his wand at the fireplace with a muttered _Incendio_ to set it alight. "I'm not a fan of Shakespeare. The man was grossly overrated in my opinion, but Hermione quite likes his poetry." He set his book bag down on the table and flung himself indelicately onto an armchair close to the fire. He gestured with an elegant wave of his hand for Draco to do the same. "So, tell me, what inconsequential thing has you resorting to breaking and entering?"

Draco sunk gracefully onto the smaller armchair closer to the fire. _Hmm_. The fabric of it smelled faintly of roses. The scent was wonderful, both comforting and oddly enticing, and he fought to keep from curling into the high back of the seat and inhaling deeply. "Can you really call it breaking and entering if I had the means to enter?"

"You entered into a room that isn't yours, without permission," Blaise retorted. "I'm fairly certain that is the dictionary definition of breaking and entering. But since you're here, you might as well stay and get yourself warm. It's fucking freezing out there. Tell me, though, that you aren't still hung up about me being made Head Boy over you."

Draco raised an eyebrow at his friend. "I never was, thank you," he loftily replied. "Believe me, Blaise, if I had wanted to be Head Boy this year, I would have been."

"I don't doubt that," Blaise replied, grinning. "But I think you enjoy being out from under old Lucy's thumb too much, slacking off in school, cavorting with Muggle-borns and Blood Traitors and the like."

"You would enjoy your freedom too, Blaise, if you'd lived the majority of your life with a madman."

"I didn't mean it like that, mate," Blaise apologised. "Truly, I've known you for years, and I don't think I've ever seen you so relaxed. When it's all said and done though, Lucy's going to rot up there with the Dementors, and if you want my honest opinion, it couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke."

Draco couldn't help a little laugh at that. "True, I suppose."

"But who'd have thought Potter would have actually had the balls to end it all, anyway?"

Draco raised his hand in a mock toast. "To Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Wasn't-Actually-As-Useless-As-First-Thought."

Blaise chuckled. "I mean, I know there was that whole business with the prophecy, but how many of us thought he'd end up doing it?"

"I did," Draco replied honestly. "Or, at least, I'd hoped. I don't much care how he did it, and I'd never admit as much in his presence, but when Potter finally did old Voldy in and got the senior Death Eaters, and even the junior Death Nibblers rounded up… fuck, I'd never felt so relieved."

Blaise nodded sombrely. "Me neither. But moving on to substantially less depressing topics…"

Blaise continued to prattle on as Draco calculated his next move. Resigned as he was to his delay, it didn't mean he couldn't plot silently, imagining just how deliciously sweet victory over Granger would be when he finally got hold of that mirror, and the stark relief that would replace his nervous anticipation when he would finally be able to use it.

"… was saying she wants me to come home for Christmas, some such noise about the flower arrangements and the poor sap she's marrying come February. His name's Baldassario. Nice bloke. He owns a winery, so naturally, he's loaded."

Draco noncommittally hummed, yawning as he let his mind wander.

"You still with me, mate?" Blaise leaned in, waving a hand in front of Draco's face.

Draco shook his head and sat up a little straighter. "Yeah, something about having to give a nice bald bloke flowers and wine, right?"

Blaise sighed and sat back down. "Sure, why not?"

"Sorry." Draco rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "I've been distracted lately."

"Yes, I've noticed that the lovely Miss Granger has that effect on you these days. She's made you rather violent, too, if what you did to Theo this morning is any indication. I'm not sure if I prefer your years of silent staring and pining to this or not."

Draco's head snapped back. "What did you just say?" he growled.

"I'm not blind, Draco. If you're going to watch her, the least you could do is be covert about it, like you were in fourth and fifth years. Now you've dropped all pretense of subtlety, and you're being quite bold about it, too!"

"I do no such thing!" Draco retorted. The lie tasted bitter on his tongue.

"We've known each other since the bloody cradle, Draco. I'd like to think I know you fairly well," Blaise reminded him, chuckling. "And it's not as though I blame you in the least. I understand the attraction completely."

"Do you, now?"

Blaise laughed. "Don't turn this back on me, you're the one that's been staring longingly in the direction of her bedroom for the last five minutes – hell, the past four _years_ , really! But for the sake of our conversation, I have to break your heart: she isn't in right now."

Draco looked up at his friend through his sugar-white fringe. "I know she's not."

"Your knowledge of Hermione's comings and goings is rather freakish," Blaise casually remarked.

"I saw her in the Great Hall before I got here," Draco explained through gritted teeth.

"Of course. How silly of me to think that you might have been stalking the girl. After all, breaking into her dorm with the intention of stealing into her room could hardly be construed as such, could it?"

"You make it sound as if I came in here with the intention of sniffing her pillows," Draco irritably muttered.

Blaise snorted with amusement. "I have absolutely no clue what your intentions with Hermione are. Which leads me to ask, _are_ your attentions to her just the final middle finger to your father, or something a little more genuine?"

Draco sighed. "Whatever attention I may now be paying to Granger is, in part, the result of my knowledge that I'm no longer in danger of being flayed alive for paying it."

"You've always paid attention to Hermione," Blaise pointed out. "Until this year though, it was just very rarely positive attention."

"Couldn't have it getting back to my father that I was friendly with a Mudblood now could I?" Draco muttered, bitter. "If I hadn't truly believed that both she and I would have been punished for it, and had thousands of things not worked completely against us in the past, I might have paid her attention years ago. The bastard controlled every facet of my life. It wouldn't have been any different with her."

"Do you really think your father would have harmed her?"

Draco shrugged. "He's done far more for far less. It wasn't a risk I was willing to take."

"Your veiled, back-handed concern for Hermione is quite sweet when you think about it," Blaise mused. "Calling her Mudblood and insulting everything she is to keep her away – just adorable, really. But what changed? Why start now?"

"I haven't started anything," Draco snapped.

"You have so started something," Blaise accused. "You're, dare I say it, borderline _friendly_ with her now!"

"What, she and I can't be friends?"

"Honestly, mate? I'm not entirely sure you can. And even if you could, I do not believe for a second that you would truly want to be." Blaise covered a yawn with his fist before he stood and stretched. "Anyway, I have to go, mate. Hermione and I are helping supervise the Hogsmeade trip today."

"Don't let me keep you," Draco muttered as he stood.

"Your belief that you influence me in any way is adorable." Blaise removed his scarf from a hook beside the fireplace and wrapped it snugly around his neck. "You coming?"

Draco paused and quickly considered his options. "I want a few things from the dungeons first," he said as they both moved past the door and down the corridor, the portrait closing behind them with an echoing thud.

"What? You expect me to accompany you down there like a dutiful girlfriend?" Blaise snorted and strode away. "I'll see you down in the village, mate."

Draco watched Blaise disappear down the hall and out of sight before doubling back to the portrait. He stopped in front of the painting and eyed the two wizards and their hounds expectantly.

"Didn't you just leave?" one of the wizards inquired.

"Yes, why are you back so soon?" the other asked, suspicious.

"And without either of the Heads to accompany you!"

"Does it even matter, you ridiculous pair of tossers?" Draco snapped, exasperated. "Just let me back in!"

The wizards gasped in unison. "Well, I never–"

"And I guarantee you never will!" Draco seethed. "'Darling buds of May'. Now let me in!"

Like clockwork, a hound barked and the wizards nodded, albeit grudgingly, and the portrait moved once more to reveal the entrance.

Draco pushed quickly through the narrow entrance and immediately ascended the staircase. He could almost taste victory as he turned left to the door that led to the Head Girls' personal dormitory; it bore an elaborate rendition of the Gryffindor crest. He took hold of the door handle and slowly turned it, relishing the moment, surprised by the lack of wards keeping him out.

"Tsk, tsk, Granger," he murmured under his breath as he stepped over the unguarded threshold. "I expected better of you."

Coming to a stop in the centre of the room, Draco simply stood there, studying the interior with curious eyes. It was simultaneously exactly what he had expected, and not even close. Unsurprisingly, there were shelves lining the walls which housed a small library of books. The walls weren't painted in shades of red or gold as he had guessed they might be, but were a soft, pale, pastel pink. The large bed was covered in a floral bedspread with a pair of gloves and an old, stuffed brown bear sitting upon the pillows. Two bedside tables sat on either side of the bed, both covered in small stacks of books, parchments, candles and an opened package of sugar quills. Photos of wizarding and Muggle origin alike lined the walls, and a large, untidy desk sat in the corner.

Apart from the clutter that adorned the desk, not an item in the room seemed to be out of place. Everything fell in neat, orderly lines, and there was a clear rhyme and reason to all of it. The room bore absolutely no trace of her Gryffindor sensibilities apart from a miniature version of her House's banner—the one that usually flew during their Quidditch matches—which hung on the far wall. Instead, Draco had the distinct, uneasy impression that he was intruding on the private sanctuary of a teenage girl.

Despite the overwhelming evidence and logic in support of that fact, Draco couldn't say he was all that used to thinking of Granger as such a thing. To him, she had always been that annoying, if a little intriguing, know-it-all swot who hung around with Potter, not the flirty, vapid, overly talkative creature he was used to dealing with – girls like Pansy, Tracey, Daphne, and even Millicent. The two ideas just never seemed to go hand-in-hand; it was akin to thinking that Voldemort had ever once been 'just a man' after only having known him as an insane, snake-faced dictator.

He spotted the mirror sitting temptingly on the far bedside table. Tiptoeing over, he deftly picked it up and held it in front of his face, staring into the swirling, stormy depths. He grinned as he turned the mirror over in his hands, cataloguing each and every detail, from the fine engravings on the handle to the intricate filigree design that surrounded the face. Carefully, he lifted the mirror and tapped it once with his wand, whispering, "Show me–"

"I promise won't be a moment, Zabini! I just want to grab my gloves."

_Shite. Shite. SHITE!_

Immediately, Draco set the mirror down, his neck whipping back and forth in a panic. He listened to Granger's footsteps become progressively louder and louder as she mounted the staircase. With no regard for anything but his ever increasing horror, he quickly barricaded himself in her wardrobe, flinging it shut as he heard her open and close her bedroom door.

He watched through the tiny crack between the double doors as she surveyed the room with an odd little smile pulling at the corners of her lips. She muttered something under her breath that he couldn't hear before she reached for her gloves and a fluffy hat, pulling them on and walking back out the door. He let out a sigh of relief as her footsteps faded into silence and lifted a hand to push the door open, but found it stuck.

He pushed more firmly against it, nudging at the bottom of the door with the toe of his polished leather shoes as he did so. There was the barest amount of movement as the door rattled impotently on its hinges, but nothing more. He removed his wand from his pocket and held it against the latch.

" _Alohomora,_ " he whispered, waiting expectantly for the click of the door unlocking and opening.

Nothing happened.

" _Alohomora_ ," he tried again. Still, nothing happened.

Draco tried every unlocking spell he could think of, but none of them worked on Granger's wardrobe. Clenching his jaw, determined, he decided to step it up a notch, sending a _Bombarda_ and a _Confringo_ at the door in quick succession. The resulting flash of bright blue light and cacophony of sound had him ducking for cover and his heart racing wildly as the magic was inexplicably, albeit very loudly, absorbed by the door. It left no scorch marks or scratches, or any sort of evidence that a spell had been used at all.

Resigned to his fate, he sighed and whispered a _Lumos_ , the pale light calming him as it filled the tiny space. He turned around and stifled a snort at the impossibly neat and organised stacks of clothing, folded and arranged according to colour, style, and occasion, the immaculately pressed uniforms fell in crisp lines on hangers spread an equal distance apart. Her adorably polished little Mary-Jane shoes were arranged in pairs in a perfectly aligned row along the floor. Mercifully though, despite the earlier blast, not a thread seemed to be out of place.

There was a small dresser too, covered in strange little knick knacks he assumed must be Muggle things. He set his wand down and picked up a small, green rectangular device with a grey screen and a curved bottom. He fiddled with the cross-shaped button on the left of the device, and found a little switch at the top. He almost screamed when he flicked it and the screen came to life with a loud _ping_ , the word 'Nintendo' flashing briefly before his eyes. He watched in amazement as the screen flickered and played pixelated animations of odd-looking creatures. He mashed the buttons with an odd sort of glee, but he had no idea what he was doing, or if he was doing anything that contributed to the little pixels at all. He flicked the switch on the top again, and the animations faded away.

Setting the odd device down, Draco fingered the ornate handles of the drawers next, idly wondering if he should dare cross _that_ line. Hell, Granger had all but invited him to sneak a peek at her knickers by locking him in here in the first place, hadn't she?

Emboldened by that line of reasoning (shaky though it was), he pulled the first drawer out from the dresser and peeked inside. His shoulders drooped with disappointment at the sight of the sensible cotton under-things and neatly rolled socks. Not a naughty garter belt or sheer teddy in the lot. Draco sighed. He supposed the bright colours were _somewhat_ daring, but that was about as adventurous as it got. He closed the drawer and moved down to the next one, stilling and sucking in a deep breath when the barest hints of sapphire blue, ruby red, and even— _Merlin, help him—_ emerald green lace and satin caught his eye.

Merlin's right nut, Granger really _was_ a naughty little minx, wasn't she?

Draco fought the almost overwhelming urge to rifle around in the drawer with his bare hands, for that would certainly spell the end to any decency and humility he believed he might still possess. Instead, he poked around in the drawer with his wand, lifting various garments out with the tip for his perusal, starting with the brilliant reds.

Looking at the knickers as they hung from the tip of his wand didn't make him feel any less of a pervert.

_Oh, well. In for a Knut…_

He balanced his wand on the edge of the dresser so the light hung down over the drawer and delved in with his hands, immediately removing the ever-so-tempting slip of green chiffon and satin from its confines. He ran his hand over the soft fabric, loving the rasp of the lace edging against his skin. _Ahhh_ , he thought with some satisfaction as he held the skimpy piece in front of him by the thin straps. Here was the sheer teddy he'd wanted!

Reluctantly replacing the tantalising scrap of fabric and plucking out another, he wondered idly for whom she was wearing these pieces. He felt an inexplicable tightening in his stomach at the idea of Granger wearing these for Potter or Weasel. Or Zabini, or Longbottom, or Macmillan, or Boot, or‒

Fuck, just about _anyone_.

He replaced the pale purple assemblage of strategically placed ribbons and bows, and removed the green teddy again, staring at it before shaking his head. She could wear whatever the hell she wanted for whatever plebs she'd deemed deserving, but _not_ this one. Definitely not!

He tapped it with his wand, shrunk it, and shoved it into his pocket.

Taking more care than was probably necessary for the task, he folded the out-of-place garments and replaced them all in their rightful spots. He then shut the drawer and sunk down, keeping his legs drawn against his chest. He landed uncomfortably on a pair of shoes. Pushing them out from beneath him, he reached back and took his wand from the top of the dresser, occupying himself with transfiguring Granger's shoes into little black rabbits and back again. He laughed wildly at the idea of leaving a rabbit in her wardrobe for her to find later. Perhaps cabin fever was starting to get to him.

After what felt like hours upon hours of solitude and perverseness (having had a second, and then a third go around in Granger's second drawer, trying very hard to reconcile the girl he knew with the girl who apparently liked naughty knickers), Draco cast a quick _Tempus_ charm and groaned when the spell revealed that not only had he missed lunch and the afternoon tea that the elves often put on over the weekends, but he was well on his way to missing dinner, too.

He leaned back and repeatedly thumped the back of his head against the dresser, having all but given up on escape, when the muffled sound of the portrait door opening downstairs had him sitting up straight, tensing.

He hadn't seriously been waiting for Granger to come in and fetch him, had he? Of all the forethought that had gone into everything else, he'd never actually anticipated her catching him in the act!

Her soft voice and Blaise's loud laugh floated up the stairs. Draco held perfectly still as the footsteps came closer and the voices became louder, the words more discernible. They were discussing the merits of wizarding versus Muggle music, and apparently a group called The Clash were far better than the Weird Sisters could ever hope of being.

The bedroom door swung open and was immediately closed. It was followed by the sound of delicate footfalls and the sibilant rustle of paper bags being set down. He heard her yawn.

Draco was torn between banging around loudly to get Granger's attention or waiting until she opened the closet door. He certainly didn't expect her to ask aloud:

"Are you ready to come out yet?"

He froze again, not even daring to breath. There was no way–

"Because I'd really like to get changed now."

_Oh, fuck._

He heard a whispered incantation and the doors came apart, revealing Hermione _bleeding_ Granger in all her infuriating, smug glory. He clambered to his feet, glaring at the small, yet surprisingly imposing figure in front of him.

"Enjoy your stay?" she impishly asked.

"Oh, I had a lovely time," he replied, gathering his wits quickly. "After all, it's not every day Hermione Granger trusts you enough to lock you up with her knickers."

He grinned as the haughty look fell from her face. "Did… did you go through my _underwear_ drawer?" she asked, incredulous.

He scoffed. "You had me locked me in there for over five hours, Granger. I got bored."

"And whose fault is that?" she shot back.

"Yours, I'd presume, for locking me in there in the first place!"

He watched with profound satisfaction as Hermione Granger, linguistic extraordinaire, floundered for words.

"Don't tell me I've managed to render you speechless, Granger?" he teased.

She stopped her wild gesticulating and sighed, blowing an errant lock of hair from her face. The hair fell straight back down in front of her eyes again, and Draco fought the odd compulsion to reach out and tuck it back for her.

"Just get out of there, Malfoy," she demanded, stepping aside.

"What sort of wards were on that bloody thing, anyway?" Draco asked as he stepped forward, stretching until every joint snapped back into place.

"No wards," she replied. "Just some clever shields and a locking spell keyed to my wand. It didn't really matter what you tried. That door was only ever going to open for me."

"Of course," he muttered. "So, I did my time," he said, perking up. "Can I have my mirror now?"

"That's not how this works, Malfoy," Hermione said with an amused shake of her head.

"And how exactly does this work, Granger?" he asked indulgently as she pressed a hand to the small of his back and steered him towards the door. His skin tingled beneath her touch.

"I assume you'll continue with your feeble attempts at thievery and I'll continue to thwart you. How does that sound?"

"It sounds like someone thinks very highly of herself."

"You're in fantastic company then, aren't you?"

"Careful," he warned as he leaned indolently against the doorframe. "That's a mighty big ego you're packing."

She crossed her arms over her chest and eyed him with a smirk. "Hello, Pot – meet Kettle."

"Muggle saying?"

She nodded without elaborating further, pushing him out the door and onto the balcony.

"In the interest of fair play," Hermione began, holding the door ajar, "I should warn you that I won't let you take the mirror. You got off lightly today. I won't be so soft next time."

Draco gaped at her. "Five hours locked in your wardrobe is _light_ in your opinion? Salazar's balls, woman, what do you do for an encore?"

"Believe me, Malfoy, you're happier not knowing."

He shook his head and walked across the balcony and down the stairs, Hermione watching his every step with a calculating glint in her eye.

"Oh, Granger?" he called back over his shoulder once he was at the door. "One last thing."

She sighed and leaned over the balcony railing. "Yes, Malfoy?"

He grinned and pulled the portrait open. "Nice knickers."


	3. Chapter 3

**Library; late afternoon**   
**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry**   
**Tuesday, December 9, 1997**

* * *

Despite the absolute torture he had been forced to endure just three short days ago, Draco was ready to try again.

His original plan hadn't changed all that much. After all, it wasn't the plan itself that was flawed (as he actually _had_ reached the mirror – had taken it in hand even), it was that he had failed to anticipate Granger being… well, _Granger_.

Looking back, he could have cursed himself for that stupidity.

This time though, Draco felt it prudent to at least put some effort into finding out just what she was doing before he decided to break into her room again. After scouring her usual haunts, he found her ensconced in a little corner of the library (why he didn't check there first absolutely boggled him).

She looked to be in a trance as she mechanically made notes from the open tome in front of her. He stalked up and down the stack of books closest to her, plucking one from the shelf and pretending to thumb through it on the off-chance Pince came along and pitched a fit at him for loitering.

Perhaps if Pince spent more time shagging Filch (like the fervent rumours that were spread about them suggested) then maybe she wouldn't be so fucking uptight, the cranky old twat.

So far, Granger hadn't made any movement that would indicate any plans for leaving anytime soon. The only movements she made were to scribble along her parchment or turn the pages of the book. He silently replaced the book he was pretending to read ( _101 Magical Uses for Chicken Feathers_ , a niche read if ever he'd heard of one) and took all of three steps before an invisible hand groped his shoulder and pulled him back.

"Malfoy?" an annoyingly familiar, disembodied voice whispered.

Draco jumped and let out a quiet growl. "Potter."

The Invisibility Cloak fell to the ground, leaving Harry's feet imperceptible and the rest of his body cast in shadow. He removed his wand from his pocket and cast a whispered _Muffliato._ "What are you doing with Hermione?" he asked, twirling his wand between his fingers.

Draco sneered at the Boy-Formerly-Known-As-Chosen. "What's it to you, Potter?"

"She's my best friend," he hissed. "I know you've got some sort of bet going on with that mirror she won, and while she might trust you, I'm not sure I do. What are you playing at?"

Draco scowled and shook his head. "What goes on between Granger and me is none of your business."

He felt the hard tip of a wand press against the hollow under his jaw.

"It became my business the minute you decided to start whatever the hell this is with her," Harry stated vehemently. "Breaking into her rooms, stalking her in the library… Merlin knows what else you have planned!"

Draco raised an eyebrow at the implications. "You make the simple task of evening the score sound positively sordid, Potter. It's as though you believe I'm going to rape her as soon as your back is turned."

Harry blinked and removed his wand, taking a step back. "I don't think you could hurt her, certainly not like that, and definitely not on purpose."

Draco rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, she's brilliantly inventive. She'd likely have me flat on my back and breathing my last before I'd even had the opportunity to hurt her. But hurting her is not, nor will it ever be, my goal."

"Then what the hell are you doing? She told me you've got some odd fixation on her mirror, but I honestly thought this was some sort of quest for her attention. I've followed you around, and I'm still no closer to figuring out what's going on."

"You're following me around?" Draco repeated, quirking a brow in question.

"I'm looking out for her," Harry defended. "You're just the person to do something stupid."

Draco scoffed. "Granger is a big girl, Potter. I'm certain she can handle me without you looking over her shoulder."

"I don't doubt that," said Harry, "but not knowing what you're after is disconcerting to say the least."

"I want the mirror, Potter. I thought that had been firmly established."

"And nothing else?"

"What are you implying, Scarhead? I'm tiring of your riddles."

Harry adjusted his glasses and let out a sigh. "You know, in some weird, crazy place in my head, I actually think you and her could be perfect for each other."

Draco tensed for a moment before schooling his expression into one of indifference. "I'm not entirely sure how you want me to respond to that."

"I don't want you to respond. I just want you to think about what you're doing and what you could be risking." Harry bent and collected his cloak from the floor, wrapping it around his shoulders to leave his head floating grotesquely in mid-air. "Be careful with her, Malfoy. She's forgiving, as she's well-proven with you, but she can hold a grudge with the best of them. Her idea of revenge…" He shook his head with a shudder and reversed the _Muffliato_ silently before pulling the cloak over his head and disappearing without another word.

Draco waited for Potter's footsteps to fade with an incredulous shake of his head. First Nott, then Blaise, then Potter… was the whole world going crazy?

The conspiracy theories of a few were nothing to dwell on, however, not when he had a job to do.

He crept back around to the side of the bookshelf and covertly watched as Hermione continued to work.

"I know you're there, Malfoy," she called out, her quill scratching loudly against her parchment as she continued to write. "You can stop hiding now."

With a low chuckle, he stepped out from behind the shelf and flung himself down into an empty chair beside her. He shed his outer robe and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. "I wasn't trying to hide."

She fixed him with a dubious stare. "Oh, silly me, this must be another one of those pure-blood things I'm still not one-hundred-percent sure about just yet. What exactly do you call skulking about in the shadows and concealing yourself behind shelves?"

"I call it biding my time, of course," he said with a smirk. "It's called being subtle."

She shook her head and ignored him for several long moments, dedicating the utmost of her attention to the work in front of her.

Draco drummed his nails along the desk and idly hummed.

Finally, he said, "I think we got off to a bad start, Granger."

She sighed and set her quill down, looking at him, wary. "A 'bad start', Malfoy? Implying that there will be further bad attempts to follow?"

He leaned in. "I told you before. One way or another, I will have that mirror."

She laughed and resumed her writing. "Sure, Malfoy, thou art the very flicker of a candlelight shadow. Your optimism in the face of, what I assure you, are impossible odds is very impressive."

Draco laughed. "I think you'll find there are few things that I find impossible when I want to do them."

"Really?" she playfully asked. "I assume you remember my warning? I won't let you have the mirror no matter what sort of desperate excuses or schemes you concoct, and if you try to take it from me, I will make you pay. That is the reality of the situation."

He regarded her with a raised eyebrow. "That hardly seems the Gryffindor mentality."

"I find that the Gryffindor mentality is often predictable," she mused. "You Slytherins, on the other hand, are a slippery bunch. Or, at least most of you are some of the time. So, to elude a Slytherin, I must think like one."

"And I must say, Granger, it looks frighteningly natural upon you."

She smiled serenely and dipped the end of her quill into her inkwell, dabbing it against the side of the bottle to rid it of excess liquid. "Thank you, Malfoy," she said before turning her attention back to her work.

"You know," she spoke suddenly, breaking the stretch of silence between them, "I wasn't expecting a grand, elaborate scheme, but I was expecting something a little more creative than a simple break-in." She shot him a cheeky grin, revealing a row of perfectly aligned, white teeth. "Surely you're far more imaginative than that?"

"I trust you're familiar with the principle of Occam's razor, Granger?"

"The idea that the simplest hypothesis is usually the correct one?" she answered dutifully as she picked up and opened another book from her pile and skimmed her eyes over the page in front of her.

"Ten points to Gryffindor," Draco dryly said. "The simplest and most obvious method stood out to me as the most likely to work. Plans that become too convoluted are far more likely to trip you up."

"Yet plans that are overly simple leave you open to extreme superciliousness and overconfidence."

Draco scoffed. "Your counter was to lock me in your wardrobe. Hardly a plan that required much forethought."

She glanced at him from over the top of her book, her playful gaze sparkling in the firelight from the nearby hearth. "It still worked though, didn't it?"

He leaned forward and plucked the book from her hands, tossing it aside. "Is your pomposity in this situation worth the knowledge that I rifled around in your knickers drawer?"

She blushed and picked up a different quill to dip into her red inkwell. She made a series of corrections and changes across her notes. "If looking through my knickers was the absolute worst thing you could have come up with then yes, I think my 'pomposity', as you call it, is still warranted."

With a definitive nod to signal that their conversation was now over, she switched back to her black quill and continued with her note-taking.

"You know I'll get it one day, right?" he said after almost five minutes of silence.

Hermione jumped as though she had forgotten he was there, sending a glistening black line through the centre of her parchment and her inkwell spilling over the desk. "Damn it," she muttered, removing her wand from her pocket and whispering a quick _Tergeo_ to syphon the ink.

"Is there a reason you're still here?" she irritably asked him, after she had righted her writing implements. She didn't look up, and Draco bristled a little at her dismissal.

He shrugged. "You send your warnings, I'll send mine."

She snorted and pulled out a fresh piece of parchment from the bag beside her. "Your so-called warnings are little more than bluster, and are a complete waste of your breath and my time. So, until such a time that you feel you can divulge to me just why you want that mirror so badly, I suggest you give up before you are further embarrassed."

She turned away from him then, ignoring him completely as she wrote and muttered to herself, occasionally lobbing – quite viciously, too – the odd piece of parchment into the fire. He could only assume she had been doodling caricatures of his face on those pieces.

It would be so easy to just tell her why he wanted the mirror, to play the sympathy card and hope for the best, but he would be damned if he would let her win that easily – and especially not after a spiel like _that_.

Draco shoved his chair back from the table with a firm push, the violent scrape of wood on stone echoing loudly throughout the library. Granger, to her credit, didn't even flinch. He felt oddly incensed, and it spurred him on. A tiny, hissing voice at the back of his mind was telling him that this was probably the exact reaction that Granger had been hoping for. He ignored that voice with a vengeance.

For good measure though, as he left, he beckoned to a group of frazzled looking Hufflepuff first-years who had congregated by the front desk, inviting them bother Granger. He didn't have the foggiest clue what any of them were after, but he was sure the Head Girl could deal with it. With a chorus of grateful thanks, they scampered off towards her as fast as their little feet could carry them.

Hopefully that would be enough to keep her distracted a little while longer.

**XXX**

He made his way back to her Head's Dorm with a determined swagger, smirking at the two wizards on horseback as they both warily eyed him from their portrait.

They simultaneously asked, "You again?"

"Me, again," Draco affirmed.

"Password?"

"'We are the Hollow Men'," Draco answered, reciting the line from the T.S. Eliot piece that he'd overheard Blaise relating the day before.

Again, the hounds barked and the men nodded, and the portrait parted once more to reveal the doorway.

This time, Draco didn't dance around what he was doing. He ascended the staircase, only glimpsing from the corner of his eye the Christmas decorations that filled the room with a warm, festive feel. At the top of the stairs, he headed for the door on the left… and was immediately greeted by a shiny brass plaque that bore Granger's full name and title.

He reached out for the doorknob, and was again surprised by the lack of defences. Surely after this last time Granger would have set up some sort of precautionary measures against him?

He pushed the door open and stepped over the threshold, finding the mirror, as before. It glinted, uncovered in streams of late afternoon sunlight.

It practically begged to be taken from her bedside table.

As soon as his fingers encountered the invisible barrier surrounding the mirror, he knew something was wrong. He was assailed by a wave of dizziness so powerful that he fell to the floor, and the room spun around him so fast that his vision became nothing more than a kaleidoscopic swirl of colours. The sensation of pins and needles struck mercilessly throughout his body, and slowly everything around him began to grow.

The room came to a skidding, sudden halt, and Draco had to fight with everything in him not to vomit violently all over the place. Everything was covered by a muted shadow, as if bright daylight was filtering in through a heavy curtain. He glanced around and noticed a mat of soft, white fur. Odd, he didn't remember Granger having any sort of rug on the floor, nor would he have thought she would even contemplate decorating with furs.

He jumped when the darkness was suddenly lifted from him, and he spun around to find the source. There was a loud click, and a flash of blinding, white light.

Suddenly, there was laughter, and his eyesight slowly came back, revealing a freakishly tall Hermione Granger standing before him with a Muggle camera clasped in her hands and a malevolent grin on her face. "Have you worked it out yet, Malfoy?"

He tried to speak, but nothing more than an indignant sounding squeak passed his lips.

She laughed again. "Maybe this will help." She picked up the mirror and tapped it once with her wand. "Show me Draco Malfoy," she asked of it, smiling with great amusement as she moved to sit on her knees before him (too bad he hadn't much time to enjoy the submissiveness of the pose!).

She held the mirror up to his face, and Draco almost had a heart attack at the sight in the glass: a snowy-white, long-bodied, pointy-faced, grey-eyed ferret.

He shot her what he hoped to be a purely venomous look. She laughed once more and rolled her eyes, then whispered a quick _Finite_ to the mirror and replaced it on her table. "Don't look at me like that," she chastised as she picked him up and held him in her lap, stroking over his fur until he was uncontrollably shivering in pleasure. "It's hardly my fault you're so hideously predictable. It's not as if I didn't warn you."

He squirmed violently in her hold and let out hiss after angry little hiss, to which she only laughed some more. "Yes, yes, I'm sure you'll get your retribution – hex my hair skyward and what-not, but for now, let me enjoy the moment." She closed her eyes and let out a deep, exaggerated sigh. "Wonderful," she happily sighed, petting him.

"Now," she said a few minutes later, reaching over and picking up his Hawthorn wand from the floor and twirling it between her fingers, "what do I do with you?" She exaggerated pondering her options, tapping the wand to her cheek and hamming up her contemplative expression in complete silence. "I could leave you in here, but frankly I don't trust you not to give in to your newfound instincts to chew my desk and dresser to pieces."

He gave an indignant little sniff at that.

"I suppose I'll just have to take you with me," she concluded with a dramatic sigh. "Do you fancy a trip down to the Great Hall for dinner, Malfoy?"

His beady little eyes widened and he vehemently shook his head.

"No, I don't think I'd much like a ferret hiding in my pocket anyway. You'd wriggle too much, and I'm not sure I could talk my way out of moving bulges in my pockets. Someone would surely notice something."

He sagged with relief.

"I guess we'll just have to stay here then."

That option seemed just as undesirable as facing the crowds downstairs, really.

"You know, you really are quite adorable like this," Hermione commented, holding his long body up to her face and scratching him gently behind his little ears – he hated the happy little shiver that crawled up his spine at that. "You're incredibly soft, too. It seems almost a shame that the spell will wear off in an hour. You'd have made a lovely pet."

 _A bloody fucking hour!_ Draco seethed, his body twitching violently as he tried to wriggle out of her hold. He was no one's pet!

She clutched him to her breast and carried him down the staircase, continuing to stroke his fluffy body into submission. Too shocked at the utter strangeness of the situation to do anything more than lie limp in her arms, he held perfectly still and tried not to think too much about his close proximity to her wonderfully proportioned breasts, or how Granger smelled faintly of roses, and had incredibly warm, soft hands.

"You want something to eat?" she asked as they reached the landing. "You'll be like this for a while, you know. Dinner will likely be over by the time the spell wears off."

Draco felt physically pained to accept her assistance, especially since it was her fault he was in this situation to begin with, but he begrudgingly nodded his head.

Granger set him down on the kitchen table, and called for a house-elf named Gerty. It appeared with a soft crack, dressed shabbily in a floral pillowcase that matched the duvet on Granger's bed. She introduced Draco to Gerty as her "new pet" ( _sweet Merlin_ , would she pay for that one later!) and then she asked to be brought a bowl of cubed, cooked chicken.

At least she was doing him the decency of providing _cooked_ food, he conceded with an inward grimace.

Gerty nodded enthusiastically and disappeared with a snap of its fingers, returning moments later with a small bowl. Granger took the bowl and praised the little elf with more kind words than were necessary for such an artless task, and sent it on its way.

"Here," Hermione said, setting the bowl in front of him.

He sniffed at the meat, suspicious of it, and let out a little squeak.

"I'm not out to poison you, Malfoy," she told him. "And even if I was, your nose is much better than mine right now, so you'd be able to tell."

Keeping his eyes on her, he inched forward towards the bowl and nibbled on a cube. Strangely, it tasted of lemon and herbs. Satisfied that he wasn't about to be done in by a bowl of chicken, his bites became less and less tentative as he realised his hunger and ate properly.

As he chewed on his chicken, he only vaguely entertained thoughts of biting Hermione for the utter humiliation she was putting him through, even if she was the only one to witness it. He ran his flat tongue over his newly pointed teeth and smirked as much as he could in ferret-form; he could do some real damage with those if he put his mind to it.

"So, Malfoy," Hermione began as she sank contentedly into her chair and rested her chin in her hand. "You have two options as to how you'd like to proceed: one, I can drop you out into the hall with a Disillusionment Charm on so you can sashay your fluffy, little tail downward to the Slytherin dorms and wait to be let in, or two, you can wait it out in here with me. You may nod your head for the first option, or shake it for the second."

He _may_ nod or shake his head? Just for that, he shook his head for the second option. Maybe he'd get an opening once the spell wore off to exact some sort of revenge. Or bite her. Whichever option presented itself first. The time spent stuck in the awkwardly long and uncoordinated body of a ferret would surely allow him plenty of time to plot.

"Good choice," she said, sounding almost relieved.

Draco would have smirked; of course it wouldn't do to have the vengeful Head Girl's "handiwork" moseying down the corridors. Not that he particularly _wanted_ to relive the embarrassment of being a ferret ( _a-fucking-gain!_ ) for the general public anyway.

"So," Hermione went on, glancing at the clock on the wall, "you still have approximately thirty minutes until you change back."

 _Why the bloody hell can't you just change me back and save us both the trouble?_ He cocked his head to the side and looked at her pointedly, silently asking and begging her to understand.

"Because I can't," she said, perfectly interpreting his expression. "Moody—actually, Crouch Junior to be entirely accurate—was able to change you back because he'd simply transfigured you." She leaned in closer and fixed him with a serene smile, whispering, "I, on the other hand, cursed you."

He wanted to scream in outrage, but the only sound that escaped him was a decidedly underwhelming, high-pitched hiss.

"And there isn't much to do with a curse except to wait it out," she concluded, folding her arms and nodding her head to punctuate the finality of her statement.

Draco glared at her. Even when his father had been polluting his mind against her, he doubted he'd ever hated Granger as much as he did as that moment.

"You'd better be careful while perched on the table," she warned. "Ferrets have appalling depth perception. I would hate for you to walk off the edge and break something."

That would really stick it to her if he did, he thought with dark amusement. Perhaps if he fell and broke his legs, he would transform back with broken bones as well. While the idea of guilting Granger into playing Healer for him was all very well and good in theory, it didn't really change the fact that broken bones were bloody painful, and he wasn't exactly keen to lump himself with one again.

**XXX**

There wasn't a whole lot one could do as a ferret, it seemed. The whole business was really quite dull.

Draco paced up and down the table in an effort to get used to his short legs and long body; if he absolutely had to remain this way for the next half an hour, then he would at least do so confidently.

It wasn't long until he was positively prancing across the board without a care.

He learned that he could make Granger gasp if he stepped up to the edge of the table and hung the upper third of his body off the side. He felt rather vindicated every time she made that sound, especially when she would leap out of her seat to 'save him'. He wondered what else he might have to do to draw other, similar sounds from her... and his mind drifted swiftly to places it ought not to go.

"Damn it, Malfoy, must you keep doing that?" she huffed as she stalked back to her seat again. "While I take great delight in your torment, I don't actually want to see you get hurt!"

Fixing her with his most smug look, Draco frolicked across the tabletop with all the grace and dignity associated with his human form. He'd also learned over the last few minutes that while he could make her gasp by leaning over edges and walking indiscriminately over the scrolls of parchment that littered the table, he could make her positively squeal in horror by pawing over the bowl of fresh fruit perched in the centre of the table.

"Not my pears!" Hermione moaned, pulling him away from the bowl by the scruff of his neck. "And Blaise's oranges… the grocer in Hogsmeade had hardly any left! Now they're all covered in ferret germs!"

It wasn't much in the way of retribution, but it would do for now.

With a groan of annoyance, Granger whipped out her wand and used a Blade Charm to divide the pear he had mauled into segments. She placed them in the dish that had held his chicken. "You touched it with your little ferret paws," she groused irritably, pushing the bowl towards him, "so you might as well eat it."

He gave her a look that quite plainly relayed that it was her own damn fault before moving towards the bowl to take a tentative lick of the sliced fruit. The juice was cool and sweet on his tongue, and he happily nibbled away.

"Glad you're enjoying it," Hermione muttered, glancing with a sigh of relief at the wall clock. "Five more minutes, thank Merlin."

He passed the next few moments by batting at the tinsel that had been hung decoratively around the edge of the table, knocking about the glittery baubles that were strung upon it. It was all quite gaudy and rather Gryffindor-ish, with all the red and gold interspersed with only small bursts of green and silver... not to mention the large and elaborately decorated pine tree that sat in the corner! Draco had to admit he rather liked Granger's version of Christmas. Clearly, Blaise had absolutely no part in it except to make sure his House was represented in some token manner.

"Merlin, Malfoy!" Hermione groaned as she fixed where he had knocked the tinsel and made it sag. "Is there anything at all you can do that isn't wholly annoying?"

He wanted to send her another pointed look that told her she should have known exactly what she was getting into when she'd cursed him, but instead his stomach began to churn violently. He scurried backwards and moved towards the centre of the table where he instinctively curled up into a ball as the blinding dizziness assailed his senses once more. Where he was earlier struck by the sensation of his surroundings growing, this time everything seemed to shrink. A burning sensation erupted in his skin as it stretched tight, and the white hairs receded.

Everything came to an abrupt halt once again, and Draco found himself sitting upon the table, panting heavily, very much human... and also very much naked.

They stared at each other in wide-eyed horror, Granger's eyes raking up and down his nude form, lingering over his chest and semi-erect cock. Draco simply sat shocked and watched as her pupils dilated, her lips parted, and her skin flushed the most enticing shade of pink.

Reality quickly came crashing down upon his head. He cupped his hands over his bits and demanded, "Where the fuck are my clothes?"

Granger jumped, almost tipping her chair backwards. "Right where you left them, Malfoy!" she squeaked, immediately averting her eyes. "They're still in my room. I'll go get them."

"And then what?" he asked, his tone bordering on hysteric as he slid from the table. "You'll throw them at my feet and leave me to dress out here? No, thank you, Granger, I'll change in your room."

"You honestly think I'm stupid enough to leave you in my room unsupervised?" she asked in the same grating, high-pitched tone, still covering her eyes with her hand.

"You honestly think I want to dress in the middle of your bloody common room? What if Zabini comes back?"

"Then get changed in _his_ room if it bothers you so much!"

"I repeat, what if Zabini comes back?"

"I'll distract him long enough for you to dress," she diplomatically offered.

"The hell you will!" he growled before he could stop himself.

He could see her eyebrows furrowing in confusion behind her hand. "Excuse me?"

"Nothing," he muttered. "Would you get my clothes, please? It's bloody cold in here and the temperature's doing me no favours whatsoever."

"I'm going," she squeaked again, slipping out of her seat and keeping her eyes on the ground. "Wait here."

"Where the hell else would I go?" he called after her. "Daft girl," he muttered to himself.

Granger hurried back with an armful of his clothes, throwing them carelessly upon the table and quickly turning her back, affording him a small amount of privacy to dress himself. "I'm sorry," she said after a few moments as he was zipping up the fly of his trousers.

"What for?" he asked in a clipped tone.

"I never considered your clothes. It seems a silly thing to overlook, and I'm sure it was most embarrassing for you."

"I'm fairly certain it was worse for you," he said with a wry grin as he fumbled around with his shirt for the sleeves. "You can turn around if you feel you must."

Her wild hair fanned out as she spun around.

He watched with a smirk as her eyes moved over the taut expanse of his chest and abs visible to her through his open shirt. "See something you like, Granger?"

She blushed and turned around so her back was to him again. "You're a prat, you know that?"

"An incredibly good looking prat," he countered as he buttoned his shirt.

"If you want your ego stroked, Malfoy, you've come to the wrong place."

He chuckled and adjusted his tie. "Oh, I don't know, Granger, your lack of denial is good enough."

Hermione turned again, crossing her arms over her chest. "You apparently don't need my validation."

"I may not need it, but I will always want it," he replied, smirking at her renewed blush. "So, where do I collect my winnings? Dastardly though your plan was, my dear, I think I came out on top this time."

"You don't learn, do you?" Hermione shook her head and shoved an armful of robes at him. "This isn't a competition! I already won that. Besides, I told you – until such a time that you can tell me why you want it so much, I will make certain that you can't get anywhere near the mirror. Plus, being a total prat doesn't count as winning. It counts as being a spoilt-sport."

"One would think you aren't at all used to people standing up to you."

"Pretending to hurl your body off the table, pawing all over my fruit, and knocking over my decorations is not standing up to me, Malfoy. It's being an arsehole."

"My, my, did Hermione Granger just profane?"

"She'll hex your bollocks off, too," she growled, "if you keep standing there like that."

"No, I don't think she would," he countered. "You see, she just now spent the better part of thirty seconds staring with wonder at my bollocks, so I'm not inclined to believe she'd willingly destroy them."

Hermione flushed, then quickly scowled and drew her wand, pointing it squarely at his crotch. "Would you like to test that theory?"

Draco smirked and gently took hold of her wrist, guiding her arm back to her side. "Now, now Granger, is that any way for the Head Girl to behave?"

Her eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. "Leave," she spat.

He chuckled, swinging his robes around his shoulders, relaxing as the scent of roses surrounded him. Surreptitiously, he dipped his nose into the collar and inhaled deeply, holding back an odd little sigh and a grin at the scent that, if asked, he wasn't sure he would be able to explain.

"Whenever you're ready." Hermione stood against the door, her arms folded and her foot tapping with impatience.

Draco blinked.

There was something oddly sexy about that pose. Domineering, almost.

He shook his head of those thoughts.

"Same time next week, Granger?"

She rolled her eyes and kicked the door open. "I'll be waiting."

"I look forward to it," he said with a wink as he walked out the door, pressing a quick, chaste kiss to her cheek before he could stop himself.

"Bye-bye, Ferret."

He growled and stopped mid-stride. Just when he thought he'd shook off that blasted moniker...

"Piss off, Granger."


	4. Chapter 4

**Fourth floor corridor near the Head's Dorms; evening**   
**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry**   
**Friday, December 19, 1997**

* * *

Draco's resolve was holding up about as well as a flimsy oat biscuit in milky tea. Another good dunk and it would dissolve entirely.

There was nothing else for it. Every attempt he had made to take the mirror had been repeatedly and inexplicably thwarted. His attempt to use an _Accio_ one day in the Great Hall had resulted in a minor explosion which shook the entire length of the Slytherin table and had the other Houses howling with laughter at their misfortune **–** Granger quite possibly the loudest of them all. He was certain she must have alerted Potter and Weasel as to what was happening, too, if their amused smirks and subtle sneers were anything to go by.

He'd also tried using a _Wingardium Leviosa_ in one attempt that, upon closer reflection and after the fact, might have been a little too sneaky and underhanded, even for him. She had been sitting outside under a heavy willow tree, staring at the mirror with a gentle smile playing across her lips, her gloved fingers tracing the images before her. It was a rare moment of calm for her, one that he found himself oddly entranced by. Whatever guilt he may have felt at disrupting it immediately dissipated, however, when as soon as the incantation had left his mouth, he broke out in a rash so violent and itchy it was all he could do not to immediately strip and rub himself against the nearest tree to relieve the pain. Granger had watched him quickly shed his robes with an evil little smile, and even had the audacity to innocently wave at him while his hands were halfway down his pants.

Draco had even tried a plan that seemed so over-simplified, he was certain Granger would have overlooked it. He'd surreptitiously sent a hex at Weasel from across the hall that caused a fetching pair of reindeer antlers to sprout from his head (in keeping with the festivity of the season, of course). Granger, being the kind and loving soul he knew she was, escorted Weasel to the Hospital Wing... conveniently leaving her bag open and unguarded on the floor underneath Gryffindor's table. The silver of the mirror had glinted invitingly at him through the opening. He had then cast upon himself a quick Disillusionment Charm and, invisible, he wandered over to the bag, reached his hand in... and immediately pulled it out, suppressing a scream as he did so. The phantom sensation of being ravaged by thousands upon thousands of fire ants was excruciating. Granger hadn't been around to witness that one, but he was certain she knew about it somehow, the conniving little chit.

He remembered being told by his father as a boy that games (and life, in general) really, weren't about fun **–** they were about establishing total dominance over your opponent, leaving no room for challenge. Mind games, however, were a different sort of sport that his father had fully backed; whether they worked or not, they always sowed the seed of doubt. While he didn't believe Granger held ideals that were anywhere near that of his psychotic father, he couldn't help but think that she was probably getting a pretty big kick out of continually one-upping him, making a nice, cosy little home in his brain while she was at it.

That was when he came to the conclusion that stealing the mirror would definitely need to become a two-man heist. He wasn't sure he could keep bearing the brunt of Granger's sadistic notion of 'preventative measures', but that didn't mean he had any qualms about employing someone else to bear it for him. Happily enough, he had just the accomplice in mind.

Without even bothering to find out where Granger was (because, quite frankly, he didn't give a piss anymore; torture would come with or without her), he ran the remaining distance down the corridor, took the shortcut behind the full-length painting of Nimue, and ran up the staircase on the right-hand side before coming to a stop in front of the portrait of the two wizards and their hounds.

"Back again?" one of the wizards wearily sighed.

"Honestly, it's as though you enjoy trouble," the other tutted.

"Yes, don't think we don't know what happens when we let you in there."

"And yet you do," Draco said, looking between the two. "Every single time."

"Alas, the downside of being charmed to recognise passwords and not occupants," one lamented.

"As long as you have the password, you have entry."

"Even if you are quite obviously neither the Head Boy, nor the Head Girl."

"Though you are a pretty one. Don't you agree, Lawrence?"

"The pretty ones were always your concern, Stephen, not mine."

"Don't think that I don't notice that that high and mighty attitude of yours doesn't extend to the lovely Miss Granger. Don't think I don't notice the way you look at her."

"Not my fault she always looks so ravishing whenever we let _this one_ in," Lawrence said with a pout. "The way she rushes back here, her hair wild, her face flushed from her run, her breathing laboured, and the way her shorter stature allows her heaving bosom to be right in our line of sight… Good Godric, she's breathtaking!"

"What the hell are you two hens nattering about?" Draco demanded, exasperated. He tamped down on the odd churning in his stomach at the very notion of a portrait, of all bloody things, carrying a torch for Granger. "And what do you mean she looks ravishing _after_ you let me in?"

"When we let you in, she follows shortly thereafter," Stephen explained.

"Positively sprints back here, she does," Lawrence affirmed with a wistful nod. "It's a glorious sight to behold."

"So she… she knows when I'm in there?"

"She's not called 'The Brightest Witch of her Age' for nothing, young man!" Stephen admonished, as though he were talking to a five-year-old. "Surely it's not entirely beyond the realms of possibility that she might have _something_ in place to tell her when you or anyone else has broken into her rooms?"

As soon as Draco opened his mouth to reply, the portrait door swung outward.

"Draco!" Blaise greeted. "I thought I heard voices out here. He giving you trouble, Laurie? Steve?"

"None at all, my boy, none at all," Lawrence jovially said.

"Laurie and Steve?" Draco deadpanned.

"Sir Lawrence the Valiant and Sir Stephen the Pure, actually," Blaise introduced with great ceremony as the wizard knights in the portrait puffed out their chests with pride and inclined their heads in a small bow. "They served in the court of the last wizarding royal family."

"Then why aren't they at court?" Draco asked as he ran a finger over the ornate frame.

"Excuse me?"

"If they're knights who served in a royal court, then why is their portrait of them frolicking at a fox hunt?"

"We like hunts," the knights said with a synchronous shrug.

"Court was always so stuffy," Lawrence explained. "And the princess..." He leaned forward in his frame, his voice dropping into a low, conspiratorial whisper, "a bit of a scrubber if you'll believe it."

"Propositioned me many a time," Stephen affirmed with a little shudder. "Why she thought I, of all people, would be interested, I do not know."

"There's a portrait of her in one of the third floor corridors. You boys should go visit her," Lawrence urged. "Come back and tell us you don't think she looks like a first-rate tart."

Blaise threw his head back and laughed. "You mean the busty blonde with the obscenely revealing green dress? I know the one. Chatty bird. I see her on my rounds sometimes."

Lawrence and Stephen both confirmed the woman's identity with a disdainful expression and a curt nod.

"We had to request a special charm be put around our painting so she couldn't visit us anymore!" Lawrence whispered, scandalised.

"Oh, the indecencies you might have witnessed if we hadn't," Stephen bemoaned. "Princess Violet has absolutely no sense of personal boundaries, nor modesty for that matter."

"Are you three quite done gossiping?" Draco pressed, mildly irritated.

Blaise looked Draco up and down, and smirked at his flustered state. "You don't know the password for this week, do you?"

"I need your help with something," Draco interjected, dismissing the notion and pushing past his friend, sending the portrait flying back into the wall with a muffled squawk of indignation from the knights.

"Make yourself comfortable," Blaise sarcastically muttered. "Really, what the bloody hell do you want, Draco?"

"Granger has something of mine. In her room."

Blaise raised an amused eyebrow at that. "Does she now? Pray tell, how did something of _yours_ get in _there_?"

"Certainly not in the way you're insinuating."

"I insinuated nothing, my friend. I inferred. You're the one who implied something scandalous." Blaise took a seat opposite him and rested his chin in his hands. "Now, how do you need my help?"

"I need you to go into Granger's rooms and retrieve an item for me."

Blaise looked both suspicious and incredulous at the request. "Do I look like I have a death wish? I _like_ my life, Draco. Hell, why do you think I didn't argue with the witch when she wanted to deck the common room out like this?"

Draco rolled his eyes and reclined deeper into the armchair. "She won't hurt you. It's me she has a problem with."

"She'll have a problem with me pretty damn quick if she thinks I'm helping _you_ to mess with her," Blaise retorted. "What do you suppose my life would be like for the rest of the year if I pissed her off?"

Draco snorted in amusement. "Honestly, Blaise? You're a sadistic enough bastard that I think you'd enjoy it."

"You know me too well," Blaise agreed with a loud laugh. "So, what is it that she has that's so special you'd risk her wrath again?"

"A hand mirror. Silver, with a handle carved in the shape of a peacock feather. The glass is foggy."

Blaise nodded thoughtfully. "I know the one. I also know that she won it rightfully in a competition that you, coincidence of coincidences, also entered. So, assuming for the moment that I believe you have a reasonable and decidedly un-psychotic reason for wanting it, what's in it for me if I help you?"

Draco gritted his teeth and asked, "What exactly would you want?"

Blaise held a hand to his chin and hummed in a melodramatic display of feigned indecisiveness. "Hmm, well, I can't extort homework from you, seeing as how I'm much smarter than you are. I don't need money, and I have no desire for a personal slave. I also don't think you can give me anything I can't procure myself, so I don't suppose there is anything at all I want from you."

"If you don't help me, I'll tell Lovegood that she stars in all your sordid fantasies," Draco threatened.

"Please do!" Blaise pleaded. "Maybe she'll believe it coming from you, instead of saying it's just the Jillywiggs in my cock making me say such things."

Draco paused. "Jillywiggs?"

Blaise rolled his eyes. "Little critters that live in your bits and make you think and say things you don't really mean. More prevalent in men than women, apparently." He grinned. "The girl's insane. I love it."

"I'd gladly allow you your little piece of insanity if you'd help me, you kinky bastard."

"Relax," Blaise said in a placating tone. "I'll help you, if only because I find this little war between you and Hermione to be endlessly amusing, and I'm very curious as to just how much it'll escalate when she realises you have the upper hand for once."

"So pleased to be a source for your entertainment," Draco snapped.

"Oh yes, I'm waiting with bated breath for the moment where you'll both finally snap, and then you'll snog and declare your undying love for one another. The tension between the two of you has been pulled tauter than a crossbow since she decked you in third year, so I doubt it'll be much longer."

"I think maybe Lovegood is rubbing off on you," Draco waspishly replied.

"Not in the way that I'd prefer, but perhaps," Blaise cheekily returned. "Though, I note you didn't deny that statement."

"That you think I love her is insane."

Blaise diplomatically shrugged. "I might have agreed with you on that count, if you hadn't already been halfway there for going on four years. And you're still not denying it."

Draco silently fumed. "Just get the fucking mirror, Zabini."

Blaise chuckled. "If it makes you feel any better, it's not one-sided at all. She talks about you quite a lot, actually. It's rather sickening. I think you're the only one who hasn't noticed just how gooey-eyed she gets when you're around."

"That's neither here, nor there, Zabini," Draco warned through gritted teeth.

"Just think about it, mate," Blaise said over his shoulder as he disappeared up the staircase.

Draco watched his friend vanish around the left corner and had to stifle a laugh. Or a scream. Or perhaps a punch to the stone walls. At that particular moment he wasn't sure which reaction to Blaise's accusation would be most appropriate. _Love_ Granger? It was absurd! On top of being a know-it-all swot, the chit was a sodding evil genius!

 _A naughty-knickers wearing, rose-scented, warm-handed, kind-hearted, deviously intelligent, fucking gorgeous evil genius... with a pronounced Slytherin streak that gets you harder than you've ever been before,_ a wicked, cajoling little voice whispered in his ear.

Draco shook his head and fisted the strands of his hair tightly. He would never deny that there was something about Granger that felt significant somehow, and had since he was thirteen-years-old (possibly even earlier than that, if he were being totally honest). The air was always charged between them, regardless of the circumstances, and a thrum of nervous excitement and anticipation always went through him at the merest hint of an argument brewing between them. They were feelings which had always seemed to be matched by Granger, and he made it a point to interact with her on a daily basis to reinforce them. But love? Draco scoffed at the notion. Ludicrous!

 _And yet, it's nowhere near as preposterous as it seems,_ that irritating little voice whispered again. _It might not be love yet, but you can't deny it's pretty close._

And for some reason, that realisation wasn't anywhere near as daunting as it should have been.

Blaise re-emerged moments later, chuckling heartily as Draco shook his head at the vacillating nature of hearts and minds.

"Well?" he impatiently demanded, shaking off his mad thoughts. "Did you get it?"

Blaise turned back to the stairs and beckoned for Draco to follow him. "Mate, I think you have to come with me for this."

Draco froze mid-step and fervently shook his head. "Blaise, I'm not setting foot in that room _ever again_. Bad shit happens in that room."

"Trust me," Blaise said, clutching Draco's arm and pulling him up the stairs. "I'm fairly certain it's all for you, anyway."

"I can't step over the threshold," Draco told him. "She knows when I do."

"Don't worry. This is something you'll be able to see just fine from the doorway."

Blaise led him to the familiar door and reached a hand to push it open. Draco's jaw dropped.

Mirrors littered every available space of Granger's small bedroom. They lay upon the surface of her neatly made bed, covered the desk in the corner, and stood upright against the books on her shelf. Fuck, they even floated in mid-air in the open wardrobe! There was no earthly way to discern one mirror from the other.

"I wouldn't use an _Accio,_ " Blaise advised as he surveyed the mess from behind Draco's shoulder. "I don't think the magic would know the difference. Besides, I don't particularly fancy being crushed to death by a pile of mirrors."

"And here I thought your narcissistic self would have loved that," Draco snarked. "How many bloody mirrors did she transfigure just to piss me off?"

"I think you'll just have to make peace with the fact that Hermione will always be one step ahead of you. Whatever this war is, I don't think you're going to win it."

"Fuck that," Draco hissed. "I _will_ have that Merlin-be-damned mirror!"

"Mate," Blaise began, shaking his head in disbelief as he followed Draco back down the stairs. "What the hell is this about? You cannot possibly be doing this just to get Hermione's attention. This has gone above and beyond petty attention seeking. Why do you want that mirror so badly?"

"Would you believe my attempts to be some kind of nihilistic celebration of my newfound freedom?"

"No, but then again I'm not quite the passively ignorant tool you want to believe I am."

Draco sighed and dropped his gaze to his shoes. "Do you remember when you visited this past summer? What it was like at home?"

Blaise's eyes widened with understanding and pity. "Draco, the mirror won't help. And even if it did, is that something you'd want to watch?"

"Someone has to look out for her!" he retorted.

"You have a blasted army of elves, all of whom are practically falling all over themselves for the opportunity to watch over her! Say the word and I'm sure they'll come to you if something happens."

Draco shook his head. "Not the same," he argued, staring intently at the Christmas decorations, and noting with interest the amount that were hanging from the ceiling...

An epiphany struck.

"Granger should still be in the library, yeah?"

"Most likely," Blaise confirmed, confusion evident in his tone at the abrupt change in subject. "She said she would be studying until it was time for her to do her rounds, which she'll be doing in" **—** he stopped and glanced at the clock above the fireplace **—** "about an hour. Why?"

"Because I think it's time the illustrious Head Girl and I properly talked this out."

"Talked it out? It's _you_ being an arsehole, mate, not her. It's all very one-sided. And besides, after all the shite you've pulled with her, what makes you think she'll even want to listen?"

"She won't have a choice," Draco replied, purposefully cryptic in his response.

He turned on his heel and left the dormitory with all the confidence and bravado of a man on a mission, with a plan so laughably simple he wondered why it had taken him this long to see it.

For a school so bloody hell-bent on keeping males and females apart, the excessive and indiscriminate use of magical mistletoe seemed strangely out of place. A couple couldn't shag in the privacy of their own dorm, but two people, who may or may not have said anything to each other over the course of their schooling, could be forced to kiss—for an audience, no less—in the middle of the Great Hall. He knew Dumbledore was getting on a bit but _fuck_ , a little consistency in his decision-making wouldn't go astray, the pervy old wanker.

However strangely out of place the mistletoe may have seemed, it was exactly what Draco needed to get Granger face-to-face without having to worry about what sort of horrifyingly inventive hex she would throw his way next.

For the very first time, he thanked the gods for the nullifying effect the mistletoe had on magic when one was confined in its hold.

There was a particularly infamous sprig just beyond the entrance to the library that he knew would be perfect. He knew Granger's routine; on select nights, she would ensconce herself in the library until she was due to start patrols. Invariably, she would always come out with her nose stuck in a book, paying no attention whatsoever to her surroundings, making the trip back to her dorms on instinct and memory alone, safe in the knowledge that nothing nasty was going to jump out of the shadows and accost her when she least suspected it. The culmination of her years saving Potter's scrawny behind had probably earned her a perfectly justifiable reason to prefer routine and a life with few surprises.

More nonchalant than he felt, Draco ambled to the rounded hall in front of the library and immediately looked to the ceiling, grinning when he found what he was looking for. He waited patiently against a wall close to the entrance, glancing with every open and close of the heavy library door for any sign of her.

After what felt like hours of monotonous waiting, she emerged, her tie gone and top three buttons undone to reveal the slightest hint of her creamy cleavage, predictably with her nose in a book and no regard for her surroundings. Stealthily, Draco stepped out from his spot against the wall and moved directly underneath the mistletoe.

He gloated with a small smirk as Granger shrieked in outrage and fought valiantly when the magical little sprig caught her in its thrall, pulling her back to where Draco was waiting so the spell could be cast over them both, pushing them together and leaving them with only one option to break apart.

"What the hell are you playing at, Malfoy?" she hissed, her book falling from her hands to the ground with a loud thump. "I'm going to be late for patrols."

"I'll be quick," he said, watching in fascination as she bent down to retrieve her book and feeling that ever-familiar thrum of nervous, anticipatory energy shoot down his spine.

"Good!" she exclaimed, hitching her bag higher up her shoulder. "The longer we spend under here dilly-dallying, the longer we have to kiss to get out."

"Well, maybe if you'd shut up for two seconds, I might actually be able to get a word in edgeways!"

"Why on earth did you choose to have this conversation under the mistletoe? Surely you'd have known I'd have some kind of objection to being under here with you!"

"This is the only way I could think of to talk to you without something awful happening to me. And don't play coy, Granger. Half the female population of the school would gladly trade in their wands to be in your dainty, little Mary Janes right now."

"Only half?" Hermione repeated with a laugh. "Selling yourself a bit short there, aren't you, Malfoy? Surely someone as arrogant as you would expect that the entirety of the school, male or female, would beg for the opportunity to sully their lips by kissing yours."

"You know, I'm starting to think all your talk is just a ploy to get me to snog the daylights out of you."

"Keep dreaming. I don't want to kiss you any more than you want to kiss me."

" _Au contraire_ , dear Granger," he said as he leaned in close. "I have no objections whatsoever to kissing you."

She arched a skeptical eyebrow. "No objections to kissing the 'Mudblood'? Who are you, and what have you done with the real Draco Malfoy?"

Draco sighed and ran a hand through his hair, wincing when his fingers caught on a knot. "Gran– Hermione. We are both aware that I haven't used that particular pejorative slur in a long time, nor have I flung at you any sort of pure-blood vitriol over the past four years."

Her eyes widened at the use of her given name, but she didn't comment.

"If I had any issue with kissing you," he continued, taking a step closer, "I never would have cornered you under the mistletoe." He reached out and pushed back a tendril of her curly hair that had fallen loose from her ponytail, and the scent of roses shot straight through his blood. "I wouldn't deign to stand this close to you." He moved his hand to her shoulder, down her arm, ending only when he had a firm grip on her wrist. His thumb massaged small, slow circles over the spot. "And I definitely wouldn't be touching you like this, either." He leaned in close and tipped her chin gently upwards with his thumb and forefinger so he was able to look her in the eye. "I thought you knew these things about me already, Granger."

She held her ground, defiant and strong. "What exactly do you want?" she whispered, her tone in complete contradiction of her stance.

"You know exactly what I want."

"You know where it is," she goaded in the same low tone. "Go get it. I dare you."

He chuckled quietly. "Oh, no, Granger. I will not subject myself to the House of Horrors that is your bedroom ever again."

"You should have realised I was going to retaliate if you broke into my room." Her warm, shaky breath fanned across his lips as she spoke.

"Ah, but therein lies the problem." He leaned forward to whisper in her ear. "You knew exactly _when_ I was in your room, and tailored your retaliation accordingly. You, my dear, cheated."

In their close proximity, he felt the radiant heat of her skin as she blushed. "First," she softly countered, "I'd hardly classify having a vested interest in protecting my personal belongings as cheating. I'm certain you would do much the same if there was something of yours I was trying to get my hands on. Second, of course I knew you were there – you triggered a ward every time you stepped over my door. I felt it as a mild static shock to the spine. And third, the warding isn't there so I can _tailor_ my retaliations. It's there so I can _witness_ them."

He chuckled again. "You should have been a Slytherin, Granger."

"Given that the idea seems to tickle your fancy so much, I think I'll take that as a compliment, Malfoy."

"Do you think we would have been friends?" he asked before he could stop himself. Salazar on a stick, he could have smacked himself for that one! He sounded so bloody girly! "If you had been a Slytherin, I mean," he hastily added.

Rather than look confused or even offended at the prospect, Granger merely appeared contemplative. "I'm not sure," she said, her brow furrowed. "In such a scenario, I'd likely be pure-blood, since Slytherins are rarely anything else. That would change everything about me – my outlook, my associations, and how others viewed me. Without Muggle parents, I'd be an entirely different person… but _you_ wouldn't. You'd be the same pure-blood snob, Draco Malfoy, except with the minor addition of having me in your life on a regular basis as a member of your House. So, I suppose it would come down to whether or not you'd actually wanted to be friends with 'hypothetical Slytherin-Hermione', since she wouldn't be me, as I am now."

He stopped her with a chuckle and pressed a fingertip to her lips, the intimate gesture seamless and unthinking. "I didn't ask you so you could go off on a tangent." He leaned forward again. "But with the terms you just set down, I'm not sure Slytherin-Hermione and I would be friends. I rather like this version of you, and despite seven years of evidence to the contrary, I wouldn't change a thing."

She stared blankly up at him, struck speechless and shocked by his words. Draco couldn't say he blamed her; if she'd started waxing lyrical about how she wouldn't change a thing about him, he'd likely be struck dumb, too.

Once again, he was grateful for the negating effect that the mistletoe had on magic. Merlin knew what Granger might do to him after that particular bout of verbal vomiting if she had ready access to her wand.

Surprising him, she did the very last thing he thought she would do: she moved towards him with a clenched jaw and a determined expression (one he was all-too-painfully familiar with). Quickly standing on tiptoe, she braced a hand around his neck to gently pull him down to her level, and before he could even begin to register what was happening, pressed her lips to his with soft, feather-light pressure.

The magic of the mistletoe, however, required a little something more to set them free.

Perhaps a little more eagerly than he'd intended, Draco wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her flush against him, while his other hand stroked the impossibly soft skin of her cheek. His lips moved fervently against hers, demanding even more with a sly swipe of his tongue against her seam.

Gods, it was like caressing a live wire! The sensation of pure, raw heat rolled through him as her lips parted beneath his.

She opened up to him with the softest of whimpers, kissing him back with more passion and urgency than he had ever expected from her. At the first tentative touch of her tongue against his, the world fell away, and he gave himself over to their kiss like a man starving.

There was a 'pop' as the mistletoe vanished, but neither moved to pull apart. Instead, Draco opted to trail a line of wet kisses down her neck and along her exposed collarbone, delighting in the breathy little sighs and moans he pulled from her. That wonderful, comforting scent of roses was everywhere, as were her hands – they seemed to be all over him at once, smoothing down his arms and back, grasping at his robes, scratching lightly at his neck, running through his hair and cupping his cheeks to pull him up and marry their lips again.

Time seemed to stand still, the minutes immeasurable as their lips met again and again between harsh gasps of breath. He fisted one hand in her utterly insane mass of curls while the other crept higher up her ribs to brush gently against the curve of her breast. He indulged in a little fantasy he'd had since they'd first begun their spirited debates, and took her bottom lip between his teeth, nibbling lightly. At the low moan she gave, he instinctively bucked his hips into hers, his cock impossible to ignore as it nudged against her stomach.

Draco bit back a groan of disappointment when he felt Granger freeze in his arms. Her grip on his robes loosened and turned slack, and she looked up at him with eyes darkened with confusion and unmistakable arousal. She looked as stunned as he felt, her lips swollen and glistening in the shards of light filtering through the shadows from the lit sconces on the walls, her breath matching his in staggered, uneven pants.

"Tomorrow," she whispered dazedly as she pulled out of his embrace and took several steps back. "After lunch, by the western shore of the lake. We'll talk more then."

She quickly took off around a corner before he could speak another word.

He stared at the space where she had stood and pressed his fingers to his still-tingling lips.

He smirked. Perhaps Granger wasn't as immune to him as he'd always believed. That thought made him absurdly, irrationally, inexplicably happy.


	5. Chapter 5

**Western shore of the Black Lake; early afternoon**   
**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry**   
**Saturday, December 20, 1997**

* * *

The biting cold of the mid-December wind sunk viciously between the layers of his heavy cloak and coat, the chill seeping down to his bones as Draco pulled his clothing tighter around him. Despite his anxiousness for their little meeting to get underway, he couldn't help but utterly loathe Hermione in that moment for her questionable choice in venue, or lack thereof.

He took a seat upon a wide, flat rock that sat close to the shore, picking at the loose stones within the weathered cracks to toss into the still, murky depths. There was a disturbance beneath the water some distance out, and he wondered quite unrepentantly to himself if he had perhaps managed to hit the Giant Squid, or possibly even a Merperson.

The ripples on the water faded into nothingness, and Draco felt thoroughly underwhelmed.

Thankfully though, Granger didn't keep him waiting long.

Their kiss last night had haunted him. In all their years of acquaintance, that kiss felt like the only _right_ thing that had ever passed between them. Never had another set of lips felt so _sodding_ perfect against his. Even now, as she approached him, looking ridiculously adorable in her pink and white knitted hat, adorned with a fluffy ball on top, his eyes were immediately drawn to her mouth, enticingly bright and reddened from the cold against her pale skin. He felt the incredible urge to kiss her again at that moment, if only under the ridiculously flimsy pretext of keeping her lips warm.

Perhaps there was the slightest modicum of truth in Blaise's accusation.

"Granger," he said in greeting as she stopped in front of him.

"Malfoy," she returned coolly. "I think we ought to talk this whole mirror business out properly, don't you?"

He nodded, cordial. Of course they wouldn't be discussing the kiss anytime soon. "I think you're right." He shuffled along the stone to make room for her. "Join me?"

She stared at the small space afforded to her for a moment before sighing and sitting down. Her shoulder pressed firmly against his, and her hands twisted in her lap. Draco leaned down and picked up a handful of smooth rocks and began skimming them across the glassy surface of the Black Lake, one by one, as he waited for her to speak.

"Draco," she ventured after a moment of silence, shattered only by the sound of the stones breaking the water. "Why do you want the mirror so badly?"

He kept his face impassive and shrugged. "On principle, I suppose. I should have won."

"Don't lie to me," Hermione sharply replied. "We both know you wouldn't have gone to the lengths that you have just for a stupid mirror from a Ministry competition."

He turned his neck and fixed her with a glare. "You don't know what I would have done for that mirror, Granger, or what I might _still_ do."

She sighed and pulled her coat tighter around her. "What sort of charm did you create for the competition, Draco?"

Draco paused for a moment and focused his gaze out to the water. "Did you know that it isn't entirely unheard of, even now, for pure-blood children to be beaten and even die at the hands of abusive parents?"

Confused, and more than a little shocked at the abrupt shift in conversational topics, Hermione stuttered out, "Um… no. No, I wasn't aware of that."

He sniffed in dry amusement. "No, I don't suppose a Muggle-born would know about that. It's covered up quite well," he continued in a tone tight with feigned nonchalance. "With all the inbreeding that occurs within the older families, it's easy to claim the child has become sick, and for them to hide until their injuries have healed. That is, until the parents decide to do it again. Nobody bats an eyelash, and everyone goes on about their lives as though nothing out of the ordinary has happened. The children assume it's perfectly normal." He fixed her with a look of such intensity that she flinched. "It's fucking wrong, Granger, and it needs to stop."

"As heartbreaking as that is," she carefully prodded, "why bring it up?"

"You wanted to know what my charm was for, didn't you?"

"You constructed a charm to protect children?" Hermione asked in wonderment.

"Nobody else was doing anything about it!" he spat. "The Ministry, the Aurors, the families **–** no one was helping the children! My charm gave them the means to help themselves."

"What did it do?" she asked, shifting slightly closer so their arms and thighs were pressed together.

He drew a deep breath. "It was a way of incapacitating the attacker. I don't know how it happened with you, but the first manifestations of magic in small children most often occur in times of high emotion, and are usually incredibly powerful. Imagine being attacked, screaming for all you're worth. If you were a magical child, being attacked would likely trigger a magical outburst, yes? This charm… it was a means of focusing that outburst into something that would allow them to get away."

"But how would you know which children would need it the most?"

"That was the problem," he replied, a bitter smile about his lips. "It's too difficult to implement. 'Noble in its intent, but impossible in its application', I believe were the exact words the Ministry used. Unless you knew for sure which children were most at risk, there wasn't any real point. And applying it to all children simply wouldn't be productive."

"Yes, it would," Granger argued firmly. "How could you dispute that it wouldn't?"

"Not all children are going to be abused, but all children will experience states of heightened emotion either way, won't they?" he patiently explained. "We can't have every kid focusing his or her magic to maim when they're only throwing tantrums because mummy won't take them to Fortescue's."

"That doesn't mean the charm couldn't be refined, though," Hermione considered, thoughtful. "And it truly is something this world needs."

Draco's lips curled into a wry smirk. "It was probably a little too close to my heart to attempt either way."

She looked at him oddly then, as though she had absolutely no idea what to say.

"It's alright, Granger," he assured her quietly. "It happened a long time ago."

She shocked him when he felt her hand reach over and wrap around his, squeezing.

"It's not alright!" she fiercely whispered. "No child should have had to grow up the way you did."

"No, they shouldn't," Draco agreed. "Voldemort may be gone, but believe me when I tell you, Granger, the beliefs he espoused have not, and many pure-blood families want to keep it that way. As long as those ideals exist, children who have fathers like mine are going to pay for it."

"All the more reason your charm should be refined then," she refuted. "Imagine all the children you could help."

"But it doesn't really tackle the issue at hand, does it? Shouldn't the focus be on stamping those beliefs out, preventing it from happening in the first place?"

"I don't think a charm made for a Ministry competition was ever going to stamp out the racism and bigotry that is so prolific in this world. As wonderful as the thought is, I doubt it will ever happen."

"Come now, Granger. If anyone can show the world that half-bloods and Muggle-borns such as Potter and yourself deserve your place in this world, it's you."

She smiled brightly at the compliment. His chest gave an odd twinge.

"But you still haven't explained why."

He weakly chuckled. "Must you have an answer for everything?"

"The charm you created is only half the story," Hermione pointed out. "I can't believe that you'd resort to theft just because you didn't win a competition, regardless of the nature of your entry. I doubt even you are that petty."

Draco sighed and leaned back on the stone, resting his folded arms behind his head. "I wanted it for my mother."

"Your mother wants the mirror?" she asked, surprised.

"No, I want to watch her in it."

"That sounds… bizarrely Oedipal."

He laughed at her scrunched-up face. "Don't be crass, Granger, it's unbecoming." He paused and closed his eyes. "My mother… she isn't well. She hasn't been well since my father was sentenced and I came back here."

"Is she lonely at the manor now?"

Draco snorted. "'Lonely' is one word for it. Blitzed-out-of-her-mind on Firewhisky and Dreamless Sleep would be more accurate, though. Even though I don't understand it in the slightest, she misses father dearly, and my not being there to distract her doesn't help matters."

"That's terrible," Granger murmured sympathetically. "So, you want to watch your mother…?"

"And make sure she doesn't do anything stupid, yes. She wouldn't hear of it when I offered to stay with her instead of coming back here." He let out a deep breath and cracked one eye open, giving her a wry smile. "So, now you know the whole, sordid tale, Granger. That is why I've been such an arse to you these past few weeks."

"I'm glad you told me," she said, worrying her lip between her teeth.

Never before had Draco felt such unexplainable jealously towards a person's teeth, even if he had been exactly where those teeth were just the night prior.

"And I suppose you do have more of an immediate need for the mirror than I do," she went on.

"May I ask who you've taken to watching in it?"

"Sometimes my parents, just to see how they're getting along," she admitted, a pretty pink blush lighting up her cheeks. "Sometimes the mean girls I went to boarding school with before I found out I was a witch, and a few times, purely for curiosity's sake, a couple of Muggle celebrities."

Draco laughed. "Muggle celebrities? My, my, Granger, you really were scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel, weren't you?"

"The idea of spying on someone doesn't exactly sit as comfortably with me as it might for someone like Harry or Ron, or apparently even you," she defended herself with a small shudder. "I can't even say I was ever too comfortable using Harry's Invisibility Cloak, either."

"I take back what I said about you being a Slytherin. You're far too soft. You should have been a Hufflepuff."

"There are worse things to be, you know," Hermione chastised. "I'll never understand why you Slytherins seem so content to regard being a 'Hufflepuff' as something one should be ashamed of, as though it's an expletive of some kind."

"Slytherins aren't the only ones," he pointed out with a smirk. "I've heard your two faithful sidekicks throw a taunt or two themselves, and not just on the Quidditch pitch. Besides, their colour is yellow and their animal is a badger. How much less threatening can you get?"

"I'll have you know that badgers are quite fierce," Granger primly stated. "They live quietly and peacefully until they are attacked or provoked, in which case they become quite dangerous, hence they are often underestimated by their larger and supposedly more fearsome foes. Did you know some species of badger have even been known to hunt, kill, and eat venomous snakes?"

"Fascinating," Draco drawled.

She shrugged. "I just think you ought to be more careful. You never know who may turn around and bite you."

"Yes, you've proven that theory quite well yourself these past few weeks, even without the need for badger reinforcement."

"It helps my case when you constantly underestimate me. I thought you would have learned not to cross me after your first attempts to do so failed so dismally. Quite brave of you to push on, really." She shot him a cheeky grin. "Perhaps you're far more Gryffindor than you give yourself credit for, charging on heedlessly regardless of the consequences."

Draco snorted. "I doubt I would have been so reckless if I hadn't believed the stakes to be so high."

"So, will you be charging heedlessly on again?" she asked, removing the mirror from the satchel bag hanging at her side and holding it out flat in front of them both. "Granted, I have very nearly run out of ideas for revenge, but the Weasley twins will always help me if I tell them it's for you."

Draco stared at the mirror and eventually shook his head. "This time, I think I might just ask you."

"Isn't that a novel idea?"

"Don't get smart, Granger. I have been so sickening forthright with you today that I might not have the patience to properly deal with you for much longer." He took a deep breath, squeezed his eyes shut, and asked with great difficulty, "May I occasionally borrow your mirror to watch over my mother?"

She smiled prettily, and he swore his heart stopped.

"Was that so difficult, Draco?"

"Yes," he proclaimed, clutching a hand to his chest and groaning with mock pain. "Incredibly so."

Hermione laughed and held the mirror out to him. "You were right, you know," she said, sobering. "You probably did deserve to win, and in either case, I think you need the mirror far more than I do anyway. If nothing else, I'm more than willing to share."

Draco closed his eyes and hummed, contented with the outcome. "Hermione Granger just admitted that I was right. This is certainly a moment for the Pensieve."

She playfully scowled and pulled the mirror away. "I can take the mirror back just as easily, you know."

"You wouldn't dare," he said, confident of that fact as he reached over her to take the mirror from her outstretched hand.

She laughed and held the mirror further out of his reach, taunting him with it until he stretched too far and fell completely off the stone to the cold, damp ground, bringing her with him for the ride. She landed sprawled across his chest, winding him slightly, but her smile was blinding and her laughter was loud and infectious, and he couldn't find it within himself to be at all irritated. Instead, he laughed with her at the ridiculousness of the situation and the position they were now in, idly running a hand up and down her back.

Their laughter petered out into small puffs of breath that warmed his face, her beautiful, coffee-coloured eyes boring into his grey ones with a familiar sort of determined intensity that he recognised from the night before. Once more, the heady scent of roses was all-consuming, and the only sounds that filled the world were that of the water lapping at the shore, and the quiet hitching of her breath on each exhale. The distance between their bodies was non-existent, and he was incredibly aware of the softness of her breasts pressing into his chest through their many layers of clothing, and his hard, insistent length that was making itself known against her thigh.

Judging by her wide eyes and awed expression, Granger was very aware of those things, too.

It was as though he was watching through someone else's eyes when Draco saw his hand come up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. He continued to watch as his fingers traced the smooth slope of her cheek, the bridge of her nose and down over her lips, her breath hitching as she watched him intently. He still wasn't even a hundred percent certain that it was truly him when he lifted his head to kiss her once again.

The kiss was soft, tentative, sweet, warm, and above all else, chaste. It was in stark contrast to the passion and urgency that had overtaken them the night before.

Their closed lips moved together gently before Granger sighed above him and gripped his shoulders in a tighter hold. His hand around her back reached up and carded through her hair, while the other wrapped around her waist, holding her tight to him. He parted his lips and deepened the kiss with a bold stroke of his tongue over hers.

A loud splash in the lake shattered the moment. Draco pulled away and turned his head quickly to find the source of the splash, but found nothing more than concentric ripples spreading further and further outwards, the culprit gone for now.

Draco turned back and pressed his forehead against hers and let out a long, shuddering breath. Opening his eyes, he felt gratified to see she looked just as disappointed as him. He carefully pushed her up with gentle pressure to her shoulders and moved out from underneath her, moving instead to sit cross-legged beside her on the ground.

Just as slowly, Granger pushed herself upright, picking up the mirror from where she had dropped it behind her. Another cold breeze chilled the air and they both shivered, unconsciously pressing closer together.

"Here," Hermione softly offered, tapping the mirror with her wand and holding it out to him. "Use it. I know you've been waiting for this."

Tentatively, he reached over and took the mirror from her hands, raised it to his face and whispered, "Show me Narcissa Malfoy."

He held his breath as the fog parted, revealing his mother sitting on a bench in the middle of her rose garden. A basket sat beside her, filled with gardening tools and a small bundle of trimmed blooms in a rainbow of colours that only magic could achieve. She opened her mouth and an elf appeared at her side. Words were silently exchanged before the elf disappeared briefly, reappearing moments later with a tray holding a teacup and a piece of cake.

"She's outside," Draco murmured, his eyes firmly fixed on the image of his mother. "She hasn't tended to her garden since before father was arrested." He absolutely loved that rose garden, as it represented happiness, comfort and everything that was good in the world. Even at the height of Voldemort's reign inside his home, his mother had never once wavered with the upkeep of her roses; the garden had bloomed on magnificently, a silent, private sanctuary away from everything.

"That's a good thing, yes?" Hermione asked as she pressed closer to his side to watch over his shoulder.

"I'd be more confident in saying so if I knew for sure what was in the teacup. It could be potions laced with Firewhisky for all I know, but yes, I think it is." Draco watched as his mother sipped daintily at her tea and nibbled at her cake, her shoulders relaxing with a silent sigh. His eyes widened comically when his mother set her tray down, readjusted her wide-brimmed hat, and set about pruning her flowers with a happy, contented smile upon her face.

" _Finite,_ " he whispered. He set the mirror down and looked out over the lake. "She's going to be alright," he said, a little hazily.

An incredulous little laugh escaped his lips and impulsively, he seized Hermione by the shoulders and pressed a quick, hard kiss to her warm, soft lips. "She's going to be alright, Granger," he fervently whispered, not quite believing the words himself.

She blushed and readjusted her knit hat. "I'm happy for you," she said sincerely. "Will you be going back home for Christmas then?"

"I wasn't going to," Draco admitted, sheepishly. "I wanted to, but there's only so much arguing one can do via owl before it becomes utterly redundant. Mother said my grades had slipped too much, and that I was to stay here and study. But now" **—** he cast another happy glance at the mirror **—** "now I think I probably should."

"I think she'd like that," Hermione agreed with a warm smile. "So, you're happy, I'm happy. Are we even now?"

"Oh, I don't know about that," Draco countered with a smirk. "You've been quite the mean-spirited cow these past few weeks, Granger. Positively Grinch-like. I don't feel like I've had proper retribution at all. Negotiating use of your mirror doesn't entirely make up for being subjected to your devilish whims."

She snorted and bumped him with her shoulder. "Pardon me for having misgivings regarding your intentions. Had you said from the start that you wanted the mirror to watch over your mother I may have been more forthcoming."

"I have a certain image to maintain, you know."

She moved to take his hand in hers, resting them both on top of her thigh. "You know I would never have viewed your love for your mother as a sign of weakness, right?"

He looked at her with a surprised expression that he quickly schooled into one of nonchalance. That not-quite-love thing was catching up with him fast. "I know you wouldn't," he softly said.

"And you know I never would have kissed you if I didn't know that your so-called image was a load of tripe either?"

"We were trapped under that mistletoe, Granger," he pointed out. "It was either kiss or stay under there forever."

"Even when the mistletoe was gone, Draco, I made no move to pull away. I let you kiss me again just now, too." She gave him a shy smile. "To be completely honest, I've wanted to kiss you like that for a while."

"Good to know," he said with a pleased smirk. "I think I've wanted to kiss you like that for quite a while, too."

"Good to know," she repeated with a grin. "So. What do we do now?"

"What exactly do you want to do, Granger?"

"I would think that you could call me 'Hermione' now, don't you?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "Fine, _Hermione._ What do you think we should do now?"

Hermione hesitated for a split second before standing and extending a hand, which he took, to help him to his feet. "If you still plan on going home then you should probably go and pack. The train to Hogsmeade Station leaves later this afternoon."

Draco brushed the grass from his cloak and regarded her with a raised brow. "We both know that's not what you were really going to say."

Hermione lifted a shoulder and gave a small smile. "Perhaps not, but what I want to say can wait until you've seen your mother and verified for yourself that she's actually alright." She took hold of his hand again and weaved her fingers through his, a task made tricky by their thick gloves, and led him back to the castle. "You should probably send your mother an owl to let her know you'll be returning home after all, before she has a chance to argue with you," she added as they walked.

Draco sighed with mock resignation. "I suppose it wouldn't do to have her die of fright, of all things, especially after everything she's been through."

She snorted. "Such a considerate son you are."

They trekked the remaining distance in silence broken only by the curious whispers of onlookers meandering through the halls who stared pointedly at their entwined fingers and spoke in hushed tones to their friends about how _Hermione Granger_ and _Draco Malfoy_ were holding hands. Draco glared indiscriminately at them, but reveled inwardly at the way they shrank back before him. He tugged Hermione behind him as he started to walk faster. Merlin help him if Blaise or Potter spotted them, then he'd never hear the end of it!

"Where's the fire?"

He stopped and whirled around, his eyes darting wildly to and fro as he pushed Granger into an alcove that was shrouded from view by a large hanging tapestry of the Ravenclaw banner. "What fire? Where?" He sniffed the air. "I don't smell smoke."

She rolled her eyes at him. "There's no actual fire, you numpty! It's a Muggle figure of speech."

"Muggles say the most ridiculous things," Draco grumbled.

"It asks why you're in such a hurry, or what you're running from," she clarified. "I give out detentions for far less than speeding through the halls, you know."

"I'm not running," he denied. "I just don't particularly enjoy being the butt of gossip in this place."

Her face fell and he felt her hand loosen around his and try to tug away; he immediately tightened his grip to keep her there.

"I don't care, Granger," he stated. "Everyone will get over my holding your hand like they have everything else we do."

She gave his hand a brief squeeze before they set off again, coming to another stop all too soon in front of the Head's Dormitory, Sirs Lawrence and Stephen staring at them intently.

"Have a lovely Christmas, Granger," he bade her with a smirk. "I apologise in advance. I do have a present for you, but I envisioned giving it to you on the day, so I don't have it on me at the moment."

"Your present!" she squeaked. She wrenched her hand from his grip and turned to whisper the password to the portrait. It flung open and she stepped inside. "Wait here," she said before flinging the door shut.

He stood for a moment in amused silence, Sir Lawrence eyeing him disdainfully from his place on his horse, before the door spread open once more. Hermione stepped out into the hallway and closed the door again, her hands holding a small, green, wrapped parcel. "You can't open it before Christmas," she told him, holding it out for him to take. "I've made sure you can't."

"Spoilt-sport," he said, with no real heat. "What will happen if I try?"

She shot him an impish little grin. "Do you really want to know?"

Recalling the events of the past month, Draco shook his head with a shudder and placed the small package into his pocket. "I'll take your word for it."

Hermione stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his waist in a hug that he quickly reciprocated. He wound one arm around her waist and the other around her shoulders, pulling her close enough to him so he could bury his nose in her intoxicating, rose scented hair while his fingers drew little circles across her back.

"Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year, Draco," she said, sounding happy and content. "I do hope your mother is feeling better soon."

"Merry Christmas, Hermione," he murmured, placing a small kiss on her temple. "Thank you for the present."

She stood on her tip-toes to press a lingering kiss to his lips, capping it off with a sneaky lick and nibble before quickly pulling out of his embrace and doubling back. He watched, most annoyed, as she whispered the password to the portrait without him hearing.

Draco scowled deeply at Sir Lawrence, who wasn't even bothering to hide his delight at Hermione's proximity, the painting even going so far as to give her a lecherous wink in congratulations when it was decided that her password was correct, as though it had been a trial of some sort for her to recall it regardless of the fact that she had done so not even two minutes earlier!

"And, Malfoy?" she called back as she leaned against the doorway, breaking Draco out of his irrational hatred for the lines and swirls of animated paint on canvas. "When you return, please bring back my green teddy. Something tells me I might need it in the near future." She offered him a mischievous smile and closed the door, leaving him standing there, grinning like a mad fool before proudly strutting off to the Owlery.

He scrawled a note in a crude imitation of his usually flawless penmanship and called his eagle owl down from the rafters above to hasten it to his mother. He tied the missive to its legs and sent it out the window, watching as it became a mere speck on the horizon. Then, he headed down to his shared dorm in the dungeons to pack for the holidays.

For the very first time in Draco's life, he felt he could smile in the face of the future. After all, who else but Draco Malfoy could score a kiss, a win, and an implied promise of future sex all from Hermione Granger _and_ learn that their Mother was on the upswing, all in the same day?


End file.
